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TITCOMB'S LETTERS 



TO 



YOUNG PEOPLE 



SINGLE AND MARRIED 



TIMOTHY TITCOMB, Esquire 



FIFTIETH EDITION" 

G 9 1886^ / 

NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1886 



> N 






Copyright by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER 

1858 

Copyright by 
J. G. HOLLAND 

1881 

Copyright by 
ELIZABETH L. HOLLAND 



TROW'3 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 

NEW YORK. 



PREFACE. 



AFTER twenty years of an exceptionally pros- 
perous life, this book has been carefully 
revised, and is now issued in a new dress. Since 
it was written, and was so generously received 
by the public, twenty millions of people have 
been added to the population of the country, 
and a new generation of young men and women 
have taken the places of its first patrons and 
readers, so that the book has nearly as fresh a 
field as it had at its original appearance. 

I have taken almost a pathetic interest in 
going over these pages. Their earnestness, di- 
rectness, frankness, hopefulness, and high pur- 
pose, speak to me of a time when life was 
unchilled by experience, and enthusiasm was 
unblunted by contact and conflict with the vari- 
ous forms and forces of evil. I am painfully 



vi Preface. 

conscious that if I had not written this book 
when I did, I could not write it to-day. There 
are some books that age can write best, but I 
am sure that they are not books for the young. 
Truth, health, enthusiasm, and a positive frame 
of mind, with youthful hopes and sympathies 
still alive and active, are necessary for the writing 
of books that shall be influential upon the youth- 
ful mind and heart ; and I can see no reason why 
this book may not go on doing the good it has 
had the credit of doing during all its history. 

The man who revises these letters is so differ- 
ent from the man who wrote them, that I am 
sure I have no vanity in saying that they seem 
to me, in reference to the purpose for which they 
were written, to form a wise and inspiring book. 
As such I commend it to all the young who have 
faith in my instincts and confidence in my judg- 
ment. 

THE AUTHOR. 
New York, April, 1881. 



CONTENTS. 



LETTERS TO YOUNG MEN. 

PACT 

LETTER I. 
Getting the Right Start I 

LETTER II. 
Female Society— The Woman for a Wife, . . 10 

LETTER III. 
Manners and Dress, . . . . . • . . 19 

LETTER IV. 
Bad Habits . 25 

LETTER V. 
The Blessings of Poverty— Office and Effect of 
a Profession, . . 32 

LETTER VI. 
Food and Physical Culture, ...... 40 

LETTER VII. 
Social Duties and Privileges, . . . , .48 

LETTER VIII. 
The Reasonableness and Desirableness of Religion, 56 



viii Contents 



LETTERS TO YOUNG WOMEN. 



PAGK 

LETTER I. 
.ess— Its Proprieties and Abuses, .... 69 



LETTER II. 
The Transition from Girlhood to Womanhood, . 77 

LETTER III. 
Acquisitions and Accomplishments, . • • . 85 

LETTER IV. 
Unreasonable and Injurious Restraints, • .95 

LETTER V. 
The Claims of Love and Lucre, . . , .104 

LETTER VI. 
The Prudent and Proper Use of Language, . . 113 

LETTER VII. 

Housewifery and Industry, , . . . . .122 

LETTER VIII. 
The Beauty and Blessedness of Female Piety, > 132 



Contents, ix 



LETTERS TO YOUNG MARRIED PEOPLE. 



PAGB 

LETTER I. 
The First Essential Duties of the Connubial 
Relation, 145 

LETTER II. 
Special Duties of the Husband, 155 

LETTER III. 
Special Duties of the Wife, ..... .165 

LETTER IV. 
The Rearing of Children „ 174 

LETTER V. 
Separation— Family Relatives— Servants, . . .183 

LETTER VL 
The Institution of Home, 193 

LETTER VII. 
Social Homes, and Blessings for Daily Use, . . 203 

LETTER VIIL 
A Vision of Life and its Meaning, . • » .21a 



LETTERS TO YOUNG MEN. 



LETTER I. 

GETTING THE RIGHT START. 

In idle wishes fools supinely stay, 

Be there a will, then wisdom finds a way. 

— Burns. 

I SUPPOSE that the first great lesson a young man 
should learn is that he knows nothing ; and that the 
earlier and more thoroughly this lesson is learned, the 
better it will be for his peace of mind and his success in 
life. A young man, bred at home, and growing up in 
the light of parental admiration and fraternal pride, 
cannot readily understand how it is that every one else 
can be his equal in talent and acquisition. If, bred in 
the country, he seeks the life of the town, he will very 
early obtain an idea of his insignificance. After putting 
on airs and getting severely laughed at, going into a 
bright and facile society and finding himself awkward 
and tongue-tied, undertaking to speak in some public 



2 Titcomb's Letters. 

place and breaking down, and paying his addresses to 
some gentle charmer and receiving for his amiable con- 
descension a mitten of inconvenient dimensions, he will 
be apt to sit down in a state " bordering on distraction," 
to reason about it. 

This is a critical period in his history. The result 
of his reasoning will decide his fate. If, at this time, 
he thoroughly comprehend, and in his soul admit and 
accept the fact, that he knows nothing and is nothing ; 
if he bow to the conviction that his mind and his person 
are but ciphers among the significant and cleanly cut 
figures about him, and that whatever he is to be, and 
is to win, must be achieved by hard work, there is abun- 
dant hope of him. If, on the contrary, a huge self- 
conceit still hold possession of him, and he straighten 
stiffly up to the assertion of his old and valueless self; 
or if he sink discouraged upon the threshold of a life 
of fierce competitions and more manly emulations, he 
might as well be a dead man. The world has no use 
for such a man, and he has only to retire or be trodden 
upon. 

When a young man has thoroughly comprehended 
the fact that he knows nothing, and that, intrinsically, 
he is of but little value, the next thing for him to learn 
is that the world cares nothing for him ; — that he is 
the subject of no man's overwhelming admiration and 
esteem; that he must take care of himself. A letter 
of introduction may possibly procure him an invitation 



Getting the Rig Jit Start. 3 

to tea. If he wear a good hat, and tie his cravat witn 
propriety, the sexton will show him to a pleasant seat in 
church, and expect him to contribute liberally when the 
plate goes round. If he be a stranger, he will find every 
man busy with his own affairs, and none to look after 
him. He will not be noticed until he becomes notice- 
able, and he will not become noticeable until he does 
something to prove that he has an absolute value in so- 
ciety. No letter of recommendation will give him this, 
or ought to give him this. No family connection will 
give him this, except among those few who think more 
of blood than brains. 

Society demands that a young man shall be some- 
body, not only, but that he shall prove his right to the 
title ; and it has a right to demand this. Society will 
not take this matter upon trust — at least, not for a long 
time, for it has been cheated too frequently. Society is 
not very particular what a man does, so that it proves 
him to be a man : then it will bow to him, and make 
room for him. I know a young man who made a place 
for himself by writing an article for the North American 
Review : nobody read the article, so far as I know, but 
the fact that he wrote such an article, that it was very 
long, and that it was published, did the business for 
him. Everybody, however, cannot write articles for the 
North American Review — at least, I hope everybody 
will not, for it is a publication which makes me a 
quarterly visit ; but everybody, who is somebody, can 



4 Tit comb's Letters. 

do something. There is a wide range of effort between 
holding a skein of silk for a lady and saving her from 
drowning — between collecting voters on election day 
and teaching a Sunday School class. A man must enter 
society of his own free will, as an active element or a 
valuable component, before he can receive the recogni- 
tion that every true man longs for. I take it that this 
is right. A man who is willing to enter society as a 
beneficiary is mean, and does not deserve recognition. 

There is no surer sign of an unmanly and cowardly 
spirit than a vague desire for help ; a wish to depend, 
to lean upon somebody, and enjoy the fruits of the in- 
dustry of others. There are multitudes of young men, 
I suppose, who indulge in dreams of help from some 
quarter, coming in at a convenient moment, to enable 
them to secure the success in life which they covet. 
The vision haunts them of some benevolent old gentle- 
man with a pocket full of money, a trunk full of mort- 
gages and stocks, and a mind remarkably appreciative 
of merit and genius, who will, perhaps, give or lend 
them anywhere from ten to twenty thousand dollars, 
with which they will commence and go on swimmingly. 
Perhaps he will take a different turn, and educate them. 
Or, perhaps, with an eye to the sacred profession, they 
desire to become the beneficiaries of some benevolent 
society, or some gentle circle of female devotees. 

To me, one of the most disgusting sights in the world 
is that of a young man with healthy blood, broad shoul- 



Getting the Right Start. 5 

ders, presentable calves, and a hundred and fifty pounds, 
more or less, of good bone and muscle, standing with 
his hands in his pockets, longing for help. I admit that 
there are positions in which the most independent spirit 
may accept of assistance — may, in fact, as a choice of 
evils, desire it ; but for a man who is able to help him- 
self, to desire the help of others in the accomplishment 
of his plans of life, is positive proof that he has re- 
ceived a most unfortunate training, or that there is a 
leaven of meanness in his composition that should make 
him shudder. Do not misunderstand me : I would not 
inculcate that pride of personal independence which 
repels in its sensitiveness the well-meant good offices 
and benefactions of friends, or that resorts to desperate 
shifts rather than incur an obligation. What I con- 
demn in a young man is the love of dependence ; the 
willingness to be under obligation for that which his own 
efforts may win. 

I have often thought that the Education Society, and 
kindred organizations, do much more harm than good 
by inviting into the Christian ministry a class of young 
men who are willing to be helped. A man who wil- 
lingly receives assistance, especially if he has applied 
for it, invariably sells himself to his benefactor, unless 
that benefactor happen to be a man of sense who is giv- 
ing absolutely necessary assistance to one whom he 
Lnows to be sensitive and honorable. Any young man 
who will part with freedom and the self-respect that 



6 Titcomb's Letters. 

grows out of self-reliance and self-support, is unmanly, 
neither deserving of assistance, nor capable of making 
good use of it. Assistance will invariably be received 
by a young man of spirit as a dire necessity — as the 
chief evil of his poverty. 

When, therefore, a young man has ascertained and 
fully received the fact that he does not know anything, 
that the world does not care anything about him, that 
what he wins must be won by his own brain and brawn, 
and that while he holds in his own hands the means 
of gaining his livelihood and the objects of his life, 
he cannot receive assistance without compromising his 
self-respect and selling his freedom, he is in a fair posi- 
tion for beginning life. When a young man becomes 
aware that only by his own efforts can he rise into com- 
panionship and competition with the sharp, strong, and 
well-drilled minds around him, he is ready for work, 
and not before. 

The next lessen is that of patience, thoroughness of 
preparation, and contentment with the regular channels 
of business effort and enterprise. This is, perhaps, one 
of the most difficult to learn, of all the lessons of life. 
It is natural for the mind to reach out eagerly for im- 
mediate results. As manhood dawns, and the young 
man catches in its first light the pinnacles of realized 
dreams, the golden domes of high possibilities, and the 
purpling hills of great delights, and then looks down 
upon the narrow, sinuous, long, and dusty path by 



Getting the Right Start. 7 

which others have reached them, he is apt to be dis- 
gusted with the passage, and to seek for success through 
broader channels, by quicker means. Beginning at the 
very foot of the hill, and working slowly to the top, seems a 
very discouraging process ; and precisely at this point have 
thousands of young men made shipwreck of their lives. 

Let this be understood, then, at starting ; that the 
patient conquest of difficulties which rise in the regular 
and legitimate channels of business and enterprise, is 
not only essential in securing the successes which you 
seek, but it is essential to that preparation of your mind 
which is requisite for the enjoyment of your successes, 
and for retaining them when gained. It is the general 
rule of Providence, the world over, and in all time, that 
unearned success is a curse. It is the rule of Provi- 
dence, that the process of earning success shall be the 
preparation for its conservation and enjoyment. So, 
day by day, and week by week ; so, month after month, 
and year after year, work on, and in that process gain 
strength and symmetry, and nerve and knowledge, that 
>vhen success, patiently and bravely worked for, shall 
come, it may find you prepared to receive it and keep 
it. The development which you will get in this brave 
and patient labor, will prove itself, in the end, the most 
-<al uable of your successes. It will help to make a man 
of you. It will give you power and self-reliance. It 
will give you not only self-respect, but the respect oi 
your fellows and the public. 



8 TitcomUs Letters. 

Never allow yourself to be seduced from this course. 
You will hear of young men who have made fortunes in 
some wild speculations. Pity them ; for they will al- 
most certainly lose their easily won success. Do not be 
in a hurry for anything. Are you in love with some 
dear girl, whom you would make your wife ? Give 
Angelina Matilda to understand that she must wait ; 
and if Angelina Matilda is really the good girl you take 
her to be, she will be sensible enough to tell you to 
choose your time. You cannot build well without first 
laying a good foundation ; and for you to enter upon a 
business which you have not patiently and thoroughly 
learned, and to marry before you have won a character, 
or even the reasonable prospect of a competence, is 
ultimately to bring your house down about the ears of 
Angelina Matilda, and such pretty children as she may 
give you. If, at the age of thirty years, you find your- 
self established in a business which pays you with cer- 
tainty a living income, you are to remember that God 
has blessed you beyond the majority of men. 

In saying what I have said to you in this letter, 
I have had no wish to make of you pattern young men, 
but of this I will speak more fully hereafter. The fash- 
ion plates of the magazines bear no striking resem- 
blance to the humanity which we meet in the streets. 
I only seek to give you the principles and the spirit 
which should animate you, without any attempt or de- 
sire to set before you the outlines of the life I would 



Getting the Right Start. 9 

have you lead. In fact, if there are detestable things 
which I despise above all other things detestable, they 
are the patterns made for young men, and the young 
men made after them. I would have you carry all your 
individuality with you, all your blood well purified, all 
your passions well controlled and made tributary to the 
motive forces of your nature ; all your manhood en- 
larged, ennobled, and uncorrupted ; all your piety, ren- 
dering your whole being sensitively alive to your rela- 
tions to God and man ; all your honor, your affections, 
and your faculties — all these, and still hold yourselves 
strictly amenable to those laws which confine a true 
success to the strong and constant hand of patient 
achievement. 



LETTER II. 

FEMALE SOCIETY— THE WOMAN FOR A WIFE. 

O woman ! lovely woman ! Nature made thee 

To temper man ; we had been brutes without you. 
Angels are painted fair to look like you. 

— Otway. 

When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think that I should live 
till I were married. — Shakspere. 

IN many of the books addressed to young men, a great 
deal is said about the purifying and elevating influ- 
ences of female society. Sentimental young men affect 
this kind of reading, and if anywhere in it they can find 
countenance for the policy of early marriage, they are 
delighted. Now, while I will be the last to deny the 
purifying and elevating influence of pure and elevated 
women, I do deny that there is anything in indiscrim- 
inate devotion to female society, which makes a man 
better or purer. Suppose a man cast away on the Can- 
nibal Islands, and not in sufficiently good flesh to excite 
the appetites of the gentle epicureans among whom he 
has fallen. Suppose him, in fact, to be " received into 
society," and made the private secretary of a king with- 



Female Society — The Woman for a Wife, n 

out a liberal education. Suppose, after awhile, he feels 
himself subsiding into a state of barbarism, and casts 
around for some redeeming or conservative influence. 
At this moment it occurs to him that in the trunk on 
which he sailed ashore was a number of books. He 
flies to the trunk, and, in an ecstasy of delight, discovers 
that among them is a volume addressed to young men. 
He opens it eagerly, and finds the writer to declare that 
next to the Christian religion, there is nothing that will 
tend so strongly to the elevation and purification of 
young men, as female society. He accordingly seeks 
the society of women, and drinks in the marvellous in- 
fluences of their presence. He finds them unacquainted 
with some of the most grateful uses of water, and in evi- 
dent ignorance of the existence of ivory combs. About 
what year of the popular era is it to be supposed that 
he will arrive at a desirable state of purification and 
perfection ? 

Now, perhaps you do not perceive the force of this 
illustration. Let us get at it, then. When you find 
yourself shut out from all female society except that 
which is beneath you, that society will do you just as 
much as, and no more good than, that of the fair canni- 
bals, especially if it be young. If, in all this society, 
you can find one old woman of sixty, who has common 
sense, genial good-nature, experience, some reading, 
and a sympathetic heart, cherish her as you would her 
weight in gold, but let the young trash go. You will 



12 TiteomPs Letters. 

hear nothing from them but gossip and nonsense, and 
you will only get disgusted with the world and yourself. 
Inspiration to higher and purer life always comes from 
above a man ; and female society can only elevate and 
purify a man when it is higher and purer than he is. In 
the element of purity, I doubt not that women generally 
are superior to men, but it is very largely a negative or 
unconscious element, and has not the power and influ- 
ence of a positive virtue. 

Therefore, whenever you seek for female society, as 
an agency in the elevation of your tastes, the preserva- 
tion of your morals, and the improvement of your mind, 
seek for that which is above you. I do not counsel you 
to treat with rudeness or studied neglect such inferior 
female society as you are obliged to come in contact 
with. On the contrary, you owe such society a duty. 
You should stimulate it, infuse new life into it, if possi- 
ble, and do for it what you would have female society 
do for yourself. 

This matter of seeking female society above yourself 
you should carry still further. Never content yourself 
with the idea of having a common-place wife. You 
want one who will stimulate you, stir you up, keep you 
moving, show you your weak points, and make some- 
thing of you. Don't fear that you cannot get such a 
wife. I very well remember the reply which a gentle- 
man who happened to combine the qualities of wit and 
common sense, made to a young man who expressed a 



Female Society — The Woman for a Wife. 13 

fear that a certain young lady of great beauty and at- 
tainments would dismiss him, if he should become 
serious. "My friend," said the wit, "infinitely more 
beautiful and accomplished women than she is, have 
married infinitely uglier and meaner men than you are." 
And such is the fact. If you are honest and honorable, 
if your character is spotless, if you are enterprising and 
industrious, if you have some grace and a fair degree of 
sense, and if you love appreciatingly and truly, you can 
marry almost anybody worth your having. So, to en- 
courage yourself, carry in your memory the above 
aphorism reduced to a form something like this : " In- 
finitely finer women than I ever expect to marry, have 
loved and married men infinitely meaner than I am." 

The apprehensions of women are finer and quicker 
than those of men. With equal early advantages, the 
woman is more of a woman at eighteen than a man is a 
man at twenty-one. After marriage, as a general thing, 
the woman ceases to acquire. Now, I do not say that 
this is necessary, or that it should be the case, but I 
simply state a general fact. The woman is absorbed in 
family cares, or perhaps devotes from ten to twenty 
years to the bearing and rearing of children — the most 
dignified, delightful, and honorable office of her life. 
This consumes her time, and, in a great multitude of 
instances, deprives her of intellectual culture. 

In the meantime, the man is out, engaged in business. 
He comes in daily contact with minds stronger and 



r4 TitcomFs Letters. 

sharper than his own. He grows and matures, and in 
ten years from the date of his marriage, becomes, in 
reality, a new man. Now, if he was so foolish as to 
marry a woman because she had a pretty form and face, 
or sweet eyes, or an amiable disposition, or a pleasant 
temper, or wealth, he will find that he has passed en- 
tirely by his wife, and that she is really no more of 
a companion for him than a child would be. I know of 
but few sadder sights in this world than that of mates 
whom the passage of years has mis-mated. A woman 
ought to have a long start of a man, and then, ten to 
one, the man will come out ahead in the race of a long 
life. 

I suppose that in every young man's mind there exists 
the hope and the expectation of marriage. When a 
young man pretends to me that he has no wish to 
marry, and that he never expects to marry, I always 
infer one of two things : that he lies, and is really very 
anxious for marriage, or that his heart has been pol- 
luted by association with unworthy women. In a thou- 
sand cases we shall not find three exceptions to this 
rule. A young man who, with any degree of earnest- 
ness, declares that he intends never to marry, confesses 
to a brutal nature or perverted morals. 

But how shall a good wife be won ? I know that men 
naturally shrink from the attempt to obtain companions 
who are their superiors ; but they will find that really 
intelligent women, who possess the most desirable qual- 



Female Society — The Woman for a Wife. 15 

ities, are uniformly modest, and hold their charms in 
modest estimation. What such women most admire 
in men is gallantry ; not the gallantry of courts and 
fops, but boldness, courage, devotion, decision, and 
refined civility. A man's bearing wins ten superior 
women where his boots and brains win one. If a man 
stand before a woman with respect for himself and fear- 
lessness of her, his suit is half won. The rest may 
safely be left to the parties most interested. Therefore, 
never be afraid of a woman. Women are the most 
harmless and agreeable creatures in the world, to a man 
who shows that he has got a man's soul in him. If you 
have not the spirit in you to come up to a test like 
this, you have not that in you which most pleases a 
high-souled woman, arid you will be obliged to content 
yourself with the simple girl who, in a quiet way, is en- 
deavoring to attract and fasten you. 

But don't be in a hurry about the matter. Don't get 
into a feverish longing for marriage. It isn't creditable 
to you. Especially don't imagine that any disappoint- 
ment in love which takes place before you are twenty- 
one years old will be of any material damage to you. 
The truth is, that before a man is twenty-five years old 
he does not know what he wants himself. So don't be 
in a hurry. The more of a man you become, and the 
more of manliness you become capable of exhibiting in 
your association with women, the better wife you will be 
able to obtain ; and one year's possession of the heart 



1 6 Titcomffs Letters. 

and hand of a really noble specimen of her sex is worth 
nine hundred and ninety-nine years' possession of a 
sweet creature with two ideas in her head, and nothing 
new to say about either of them. " Better fifty years 
of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." So don't be in a 
hurry, I say again. You don't want a wife now, and you 
have not the. slightest idea of the kind of wife you will 
want by-and-by. Go into female society if you can find 
that which will improve you, but not otherwise. You 
can spend your time better. Seek the society of good 
men. That is often more accessible to you than the 
other, and it is through that mostly that you will find 
your way to good female society. 

If any are disposed to complain of the injustice to 
woman of advice like this, and believe that it involves a 
wrong to her, I reply that not the slightest wrong is in- 
tended. Thorough appreciation of a good woman, on 
the part of a young man, is one of his strongest recom- 
mendations to her favor. The desire of such a man to 
possess and associate his life with such a woman, gives 
evidence of qualities, aptitudes, and capacities which 
entitle him to any woman's consideration. There is 
something good in him ; and however uncultivated he 
may be — however rude in manner, and rough in person 
— he only needs development to become worthy of her, 
in some respects, at least. I shall not quarrel with a 
woman who desires a husband superior to herself, for I 
know it will be well for her to obtain such an one, if she 



Female Society — The Woman for a Wife. iy 

will be stimulated by contact with a higher mind to a 
brighter and broader development. At the same time, 
I must believe that for a man to marry his inferior, is 
to call upon himself a great misfortune ; to deprive him- 
self of one of the most elevating and refining influences 
which can possibly affect him. I therefore believe it to 
be the true policy of every young man to aim high in 
his choice of a companion. I have previously given a 
reason for this policy, and both that and this conspire 
to establish the soundness of my counsel. 

One thing more : not the least important, but the 
last in this letter. No woman without piety in her 
heart is fit to be the companion of any man. You may 
get, in your wife, beauty, amiability, sprightliness, wit, 
accomplishments, wealth, and learning, but if that wife 
have no higher love than herself and yourself, she is 
a poor creature. She cannot elevate you above mean 
aims and objects, she cannot educate her children prop- 
erly, she cannot in hours of adversity sustain and com- 
fort you, she cannot bear with patience your petulance 
induced by the toils and vexations of business, and she 
will never be safe against the seductive temptations of 
gaiety and dress. 

Then, again, a man who has the prayers of a pious 
wife, and knows that he has them — upheld by heaven, 
or by a refined sense of obligation and gratitude — can 
rarely become a very bad man. A daily prayer from 
the heart of a pure and pious wife, for a husband en- 



1 8 TitcomPs Letters. 

grossed in the pursuits of wealth or fame, is a chain of 
golden words that links his name every day with the 
name of God. He may snap it three hundred and 
sixty-five times in a year, for many years, but the 
chances are that in time he will gather the sundered 
filaments, and seek to re-unite them in an everlasting 
bond. 



LETTER III. 

MANNERS AND DRESS. 

So over violent, or over civil, 

That every man with him was God or devil 

— Dryden. 
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 

But not expressed in fancy ; rich not gaudy ; 
For the apparel oft proclaims the man. 

— Shaksperh. 

IT is well for young men to obtain, at the very start 
of their career, some idea of the value of politeness. 
Some cannot be otherwise than polite. They are born 
so. One can kick them roundly and soundly, and they 
will not refuse to smile, if it be done good-naturedly. 
They dodge all corners by a necessity of their nature. 
If their souls had only corporeal volume, we could see 
them making their way through a crowd, like nice little 
spaniels, scaring nobody, running between nobody's 
legs, but winding along shrinkingly and gracefully, see- 
ing a master in every man, and thus flattering every 
man's vanity into good-nature, but really spoiling their 
reputation as reliable dogs, by their undiscriminating 



20 TitcomVs Letters. 

and universal complaisance. There is a self-forgetful- 
ness which is so deep as to be below self-respect, and 
such instances as we occasionally meet with should be 
treated compassionately, like cases of idiocy or insanity, 
except when found in connection with the post-office 
department or among hotel waiters. 

But puppyism is not really politeness. The genuine 
article is as necessary to success, and particularly to an 
enjoyable success, as integrity, or industry, or any other 
indispensable thing. All machinery ruins itself by fric- 
tion, without the presence of a lubricating fluid. Polite- 
ness, or civility, or urbanity, or whatever we may choose 
to call it, is the oil which preserves the machinery of 
society from destruction. We are obliged to bend to 
one another — to step aside and let another pass, to 
ignore this and that personal peculiarity, to speak pleas- 
antly when irritated, and to do a great many things to 
avoid abrasion and collision. In other words, in a world 
of selfish interests and pursuits, where every man is pur- 
suing his own special good, we must mask our real de- 
signs in studied politeness, or mingle them with real 
kindness, in order to elevate the society of men above 
the society of wolves. Young men generally would 
doubtless be thoroughly astonished if they could com- 
prehend at a single glance how greatly their personal 
happiness, popularity, prosperity, and usefulness depend 
on their manners. 

I know young men who, in the discharge of their 



Maimers and Dress. 21 

duties, imagine that if they go through them with a 
literal performance, they are doing all that they under- 
take to do. You will never see a smile upon their faces, 
nor hear a genial word of good fellowship from their 
lips ; and from the manner in which their labor is per- 
formed you would never learn that they were engaged 
in intercourse with human beings. They carry the 
same manner and the same spirit into the counting-room 
that they do into the dog-kennel or the stable. Every- 
body hates such young men as these, and recoils from 
all contact with them. If they have business with them, 
they close it as soon as possible, and get out of their 
presence. A man who, having got his vessel under 
headway on the voyage of life, takes a straight course, 
minding nothing for the man-of-war that lies in his path, 
or the sloop that crosses his bow, or the fishing smacks 
that find game where he seeks nothing but a passage, 
or interposing rocks or islands, will be very sure to get 
terribly rubbed before he gets through. 

I despise servility, but true and uniform politeness is 
the glory of any young man. It should be a politeness 
full of frankness and good-nature, unobtrusive and con- 
stant, and uniform in its exhibition to every class of 
men. The young man who is overwhelmingly polite to 
a celebrity or a nabob, and rude to a poor Irishman be- 
cause he is a poor Irishman, deserves to be despised. 
That style of manners which combines self-respect with 
respect for the rights and feelings of others, especially 



22 TitcornVs Letters. 

if it be warmed up by the fires of a genial heart, is a 
thing to be coveted and cultivated, and it is a thing that 
pays, alike in cash and comfort. 

The talk of manners introduces us naturally to dress 
and personal appearance. I believe in dress. I believe 
that it is the duty of all men — young and old — to make 
their persons, so far as practicable or possible, agreeable 
to those with whom they are thrown into association. 
I mean by this that they shall not offend by singularity, 
nor by slovenliness ; that they shall " make a con- 
science " of clean boots and finger-nails, frequently 
change their linen, and not show themselves in shirt- 
sleeves if they can help it. Let no man know by your 
dress what your business is. You dress your person, 
not your trade. You are, if you know enough, to mould 
the fashion of the time to your own personal peculiar- 
ities — to make it your servant, and not allow it to be 
your master. Never dress in extremes. Let there al- 
ways be a hint in your dress that you know the style, 
but, for the best of reasons, disregard its more extreme 
demands. The best possible impression that you can 
make by your dress is to make no separate impression 
at all ; but so to harmonize its material and shape with 
your personality, that it becomes tributary in the gen- 
eral effect, and so exclusively tributary that people can- 
not tell after seeing you what kind of clothes you wear. 
They will only remember that you look well, and some 
how dress becomingly. 



Manners and Dress. 23 

I suppose that I shall be met here with a protest from 
employers, and a kind of protest from the employed. 
Counsel to dress well is dangerous, is it ? But every- 
body now dresses extravagantly ; and, as extravagant 
dressing is usually very far from good dressing, I think 
that the danger of exciting greater extravagance is very 
small. It may be descending into pretty small particu- 
lars, but it is proper to say that some men can dress 
better on fifty dollars a year than others can on one 
hundred, and for reasons which it is my duty to dis- 
close. There was something in the doctrine of the loafer 
who maintained that " extremes justify the means," 
illustrating his proposition by wearing faultless hat and 
boots and leaving the rest of his person in rags ; but he 
had not touched the real philosophy of the matter. 

There is on every man what may be called a dress- 
centre— a point from which the rest of the dress should 
be developed or unfolded. A faultless cravat or neck- 
tie, supporting an immaculate and stylish shirt-collar, 
is, perhaps, as good a " dress-centre" as can be chosen 
or adopted. Outside of this, there should not be a no- 
ticeable feature of the dress except that it is harmonious 
and unobtrusive. A neck always well dressed will atone 
almost for negligence in every other department of per- 
sonal drapery. The main thing is to take some small 
point of dress and make the most of it, and then bring 
everything else into modest subordination to it. 

One sees this kind of thing in travelling. We meet 



24 Titcomtfs Letters. 

multitudes from all quarters and of different national- 
ities. One, and he is usually a Yankee, wears the best 
of broadcloth, and the costliest of coats, and looks vul- 
gar ; while another with a single stamp of good taste 
upon him, at some central point, is a gentleman at half 
price. Rich clothes are really a sign of mental poverty. 
Let the secret of good dressing be thoroughly learned, 
and we shall hear comparatively little of the cost of 
dress. Let each young man choose his central idea, 
plant it and develop it ; and if he has good common 
sense he will find that he can dress better than he ever 
could before, with the expenditure of half the money it 
has usually cost him. 



LETTER IV. 

BAD HABITS. 

There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple : 
If the ill spirit have so fair a house 
Good things will strive to dwell with't. 

— SHAKSPERBi 

He that has light within his own clear breast 
May sit i' the centre and enjoy bright day ; 
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts, 
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun. 

— Milton. 

IT is entirely natural for people to form habits, so that 
if bad habits be avoided, the good ones will gene- 
rally take care of themselves. I had no intention when 
I commenced these letters of saying anything upon dog- 
matic theology, but I take the liberty of suggesting to 
those who are interested in this kind of thing that if 
there be anything that demonstrates total depravity, it 
is the readiness with which young men imbibe bad 
habits. I have seen original sin in the shape of " a 
short six " sticking out of the mouth of a lad of ten 
years. It is strange what particular pains boys and 



26 Tit comb's Letters. 

young men will take to learn to do that which will make 
them miserable, ruin their health, render them disgust- 
ing to their friends, and damage their reputation. 

Some of the fashionable bad habits of the day are 
connected with the use of tobacco. Here is a drug that 
a young man is obliged to become accustomed to. before 
he can tolerate either the taste or the effect of it. It is 
a rank vegetable poison ; and in the unaccustomed ani- 
mal produces vertigo, faintness, and horrible sickness. 
Yet young men persevere in the use of it until they can 
endure it, and then until they love it. They go about 
the streets with cigars in their mouths, or into society 
with breath sufficiently offensive to drive all unper- 
verted nostrils before them. They chew tobacco — roll 
up huge wads of the vile drug, and stuff their cheeks 
with them. They ejaculate their saliva upon the side- 
walk, in the store, in spittoons which become incorporate 
stenches, in dark corners of railroad cars to stain the 
white skirts of unsuspecting women, in lecture-rooms 
and churches, upon fences, and into stoves that hiss 
with anger at the insult. And the quids after they are 
ejected ! They are to be found in odd corners, in out- 
of-the-way places — great boulders, boluses, bulbs ! 
Horses stumble over them, dogs bark at them ; they 
poison young shade-trees, and break down the constitu- 
tions of sweepers. This may be an exaggeration of the 
facts, but not of the disgust with which one writes o* 
them. 



Bad Habits. 27 

Now, young men, just think of this thing ! You are 
born into the world with a sweet breath. At a proper 
age, you acquire a good set of teeth. Why will you 
make of one a putrescent exhalation, and of the other a 
set of yellow pegs ? A proper description of the habit 
of chewing tobacco would exhaust the filthy adjectives 
of the language, and spoil the adjectives themselves for 
further use ; and yet, you will acquire the habit, and 
persist in it after it is acquired ! It is very singular that 
young men will adopt a habit of which every man who 
is its victim is ashamed. There is, probably, no to- 
bacco-chewer in the world who would advise a young 
man to commence this habit. I have never seen a slave 
of tobacco who did not regret his bondage ; yet, against 
all advice, against nausea and disgust, against cleanli- 
ness, against every consideration of health and comfort, 
thousands every year bow the neck to this drug, and 
consent to wear its repulsive yoke. They will chew it ; 
they will smoke it in cigars and pipes until their bed- 
rooms and shops cannot be breathed in, and until their 
breath is as rank as the breath of a foul beast, and their 
clothes have the odor of the sewer. Some of them take 
snuff; cram the fiery weed up their nostrils to irritate 
that subtle sense which rarest flowers were made to feed 
— in all this working against God, abusing nature, per- 
verting sense, injuring health, planting the seeds of dis- 
ease, and insulting the decencies of life and the noses of 
the world. 



28 Tit comb's Letters. 

So much for the nature of the habit ; and I would 
stop here, but for the fact that I am in earnest, and 
wish to present every motive in my power to prevent 
young men from forming the habit, or persuade them to 
abandon it. The habit of using tobacco is expensive. 
A clerk on a modest salary has no right to be seen 
with a cigar in his mouth. Three cigars a day, at five 
cents apiece, amount to more than fifty dollars a year. 
Can you afford it ? You know you cannot. You know 
that to do this you will either be compelled to run in 
debt or steal. Therefore I say that you have no busi- 
ness to be seen with a cigar in your mouth. It is pre- 
sumptive evidence against your moral character. 

Did it ever occur to you what you are, what you are 
made for, whither you are going ? That beautiful body 
of yours, in whose construction infinite wisdom ex- 
hausted the resources of its ingenuity, is the temple of a 
soul that shall live forever, a companion of angels, a 
searcher into the deep things of God, a being allied in 
essence to the divine. I say the body is the temple, or 
the tabernacle, of such a being as this ; and what do 
you think of stuffing the front door of such a building 
full of the most disgusting weeds that you can find, or 
setting a slow match to it, or filling the chimneys with 
snuff? It looks to me much like an endeavor to smoke 
out the tenant, or to insult him in such a manner as to 
induce him to quit the premises. You really ought to 
be ashamed of such behavior. A clean mouth, a 



Bad Habits. 29 

sweet breath, unstained teeth, and inoffensive clothing 
— are not these treasures worth preserving ? Then 
throw away tobacco, and all thoughts of it, at once and 
forever. Be a man. Be decent, and be thankful to me 
for talking so plainly to you. 

But there are other bad habits besides the use of to- 
bacco. There is the habit of using strong drink,— not 
the habit of getting drunk, with most young men, but 
the habit of taking drink occasionally in its milder forms 
— of playing with a small appetite that only needs suffi- 
cient playing with to make you a demon or a dolt. 
You think you are safe. I know you are not safe, if you 
drink at all ; and when you get offended with the good 
friends who warn you of your danger, you are a fool. I 
know that the grave swallows daily, by scores, drunk- 
ards, every one of whom thought he was safe while 
he was forming his appetite. But this is old talk. A 
young man in this age who forms the habit of drinking, 
or puts himself in danger of forming the habit, is usually 
so weak that it doesn't pay to save him. 

I pass by profanity. That is too offensive and vulgar 
a habit, for any man who reads a respectable book to 
indulge in. I pass by this, I say ; to come to a habit 
more destructive than any I have contemplated. 

Young man ! you who are so modest in the presence 
of women, — so polite and amiable ; you who are invited 
into families where there are pure and virtuous girls ; 
you who go to church, and seem to be such a pattern 



30 TitcomVs Letters. 

young man ; you who very possibly neither smoke, nor 
chew, nor snuff, nor swear, nor drink — you have one 
habit ten times worse than all these put together, — a 
habit that makes you a whited sepulchre, fair without, 
but within full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. 
You have a habit of impure thought, that poisons the 
very springs of your life. It may lead you into lawless 
indulgences, or it may not. So far as your character is 
concerned, it makes little difference. A young man 
who cherishes impure images, and indulges in impure 
conversations with his associates, is poisoned. There is 
rottenness in him. He is not to be trusted. Hundreds 
of thousands of men are living in unhappiness and 
degradation to-day who owe their unhappy lives to an 
early habit of impure thought. To a young man who 
has become poisoned in this way, women all appear to 
be vicious or weak ; and when a young man loses his re- 
spect for the sex made sacred by the relations of mother 
and sister, he stands upon the crumbling edge of ruin. 
His sensibilities are killed, and his moral nature almost 
beyond the reach of regeneration. I believe it to be 
true that a man who has lost his belief in woman has, as 
a general thing, lost his faith in God. 

The only proper way to treat such a habit as this is 
to fly from it — discard it — expel it — fight it to the death. 
Impure thought is a moral drug quite as seductive and 
poisonous to the soul as tobacco is to the body. It 
perverts the tone of every fibre of the soul. One should 



Bad Habits. 31 

have more respect for his body than to make it the 
abode of toads and lizards and unclean reptiles of all 
sorts. The whole matter resolves itself into this : A 
young man is not fit for life until he is clean — clean and 
healthy, body and soul, with no tobacco in his mouth, no 
liquor in his stomach, no oath on his tongue, no snuff in 
his nose, and no thought in his heart which if exposed 
would send him sneaking into darkness from the pres- 
ence of good women. I know a man who believes that 
the regeneration of the world is to be brought about by 
a change of diet. If he will add the policy of utter 
cleanliness to his scheme, I will agree not to quarrel 
with him. 



LETTER V. 

THE BLESSINGS OF POVERTY— OFFICE AND EF- 
FECT OF A PROFESSION 

The labor we delight in physics pain. 

— Shakspere. 
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow ; 
The rest is all but leather and prunello. 

— Pope. 

IF there is anything in the world that a young man 
should be more grateful for than another, it is the 
poverty which necessitates starting life under very great 
disadvantages. Poverty is one of the best tests of hu- 
man quality in existence. A triumph over it is like 
graduating with honor from West Point. It demon- 
strates stuff and stamina. It is a certificate of worthy 
labor, faithfully performed. A young man who cannot 
stand this test is not good for anything. He can never 
rise above a drudge or a pauper. A young man who 
cannot feel his will harden as the yoke of poverty 
presses upon him, and his pluck rise with every diffi- 
culty that poverty throws in his way, may as well retire 
into some corner, and hide himself. Poverty saves a 



The Blessings of Poverty. 33 

thousand times more men than it ruins, for it only ruins 
those who are not particularly worth saving, while it 
saves multitudes of those whom wealth would have 
ruined. If any young man who reads this letter is so 
unfortunate as to be rich, I give him my pity. I pity 
you, my rich young friend, because you are in danger. 
You lack one great stimulus to effort and excellence 
which your poor companion possesses. You will be 
very apt, if you have a soft spot in your head, to think 
yourself above him, and that sort of thing makes you 
mean, and injures you. With full pockets and full 
stomach, and good linen and broadcloth on your back, 
your heart and soul will get plethoric, and in the race 
of life you will find yourself surpassed by all the poor 
boys around you, before you know it. 

No, my boy, if you are poor, thank God and take 
courage ; for he intends to give you a chance to make 
something of yourself. If you had plenty of money, 
ten chances to one it would spoil you for all useful pur- 
poses. Do you lack education ? Have you been cut 
short in the text books ? Remember that education, 
like some other things, does not consist in the multitude 
of things a man possesses. What can you do ? That is 
the question that settles the business for you. Do you 
know your business ? Do you know men, and how to 
deal with them ? Has your mind, by any means what- 
soever, received that discipline which gives to its action 
power and facility? If s.o, then you are more of a man, 



34 Titcomb's Letters. 

and a thousand times better educated, than the fellow 
who graduates from a college with his brains full of 
stuff that he cannot apply to the practical business of 
life — stuff the acquisition of which has been in no sense 
a disciplinary process, so far as he is concerned. There 
are very few men in this world less than thirty years of 
age, and unmarried, who can afford to be rich. One of 
the greatest benefits to be reaped from great financial 
disasters, is the saving of a large crop of young men. 

In regard to the choice of a profession, that is your 
business, and not mine, nor that of any of your friends. 
If you take to a trade or profession, don't be persuaded 
out of it, until you are perfectly satisfied that you are 
not adapted to it. You will receive all sorts of the most 
excellent advice, but you must remember that if you 
follow it, and it leads you into a profession that starves 
you, those who gave the advice will never feel bound 
to give you any money. You have got to take care o\ 
yourself in this world, and you may as well choose your 
own way of doing it, always remembering that it is not 
your trade or your profession which makes you re- 
spectable. This leads me to a matter that I may as 
well dispose of here as anywhere. 

I propose to explain what I meant in a previous letter 
by the counsel to " let no man know by your dress what 
your business is. You dress your person, not your 
trade." As the proper explanation of this involves a 
very important principle, I will devote the rest of this 



TJie Blessings of Poverty. 35 

letter to its development and illustration. The fault 
found with this counsel is that it has always been con- 
sidered best to dress according to one's business and 
position. 

Manhood, and profession or handicraft, are entirely 
different things ; and I wish particularly that every 
young man engaged in reading these letters should 
understand the reason why. God makes men, and 
men make blacksmiths, tailors, farmers, horse jockeys, 
tradesmen of all sorts, governors, judges, &c. The 
offices of men may be more or less important, and of 
higher or lower quality, but manhood is a higher pos- 
session than office. An occupation is never an end of 
life. It is an instrument put into our hands, or taken 
into our hands, by which to gain for the body the means 
of living until sickness or old age robs it of life, and we 
pass on to the world for which this is a preparation. 
However thoroughly acquired and assiduously followed, 
a trade is something to be held at arm's length. I can 
illustrate what I mean by placing, side by side, two 
horses, — one, fresh from the stall, with every hair in its 
right place, his head up and mane flying, and another 
that has been worked in the same harness every day for 
three years, until the skin is bare on each hip and thigh, 
an inflamed abrasion glows on each side of the back- 
bone where the hard saddle-pad rests, a severe gall- 
mark spreads its brown patch under the breast collar, 
and all the other marks of an abused horse abound. 



36 TitcomFs Letters. 

Now a trade, or a profession, will wear into a man as a 
harness wears into a horse. One can see the " trade 
mark " on almost every soul and body met in the street. 
A trade has taken some men by the shoulders and 
shaken their humanity out of them. It has so warped 
the natures of others that they might be wet down and 
set in the sun to dry a thousand times without being 
warped back. 

Thus, I say, a man's trade or profession should be 
kept at arm's length. It should not be allowed to 
tyrannize over him, to mould him, to crush him. It 
should not occupy the whole of his attention. So far 
from this, it should be regarded, in its material aspect, 
at least, only as a means for the development of man- 
hood. The great object of living is the attainment of 
true manhood — the cultivation of every power of the 
soul and of every high spiritual quality, naturally in- 
herent or graciously superadded. The trade is beneath 
the man, and should be kept there. With this idea in 
your minds — and you may be very sure that it is the 
correct idea — just look around you and see how almost 
everybody has missed it. You and I both know physi- 
cians whose mental possessions, beyond their knowledge 
of drugs and diseases, are not worth anything. We are 
acquainted with lawyers who are never seen out of their 
offices, who live among pigeon-holes and red tape, and 
busy their minds with quirks and quarrels so unremit- 
tingly, that they have not a thought for other subjects- 



The Blessings of Poverty. 37 

They are not men at all ; they are nothing but lawyers. 
Often we find not more than five whole men in a town 
of five thousand inhabitants. Those who pass for men, 
and who really do get married and have families, are a 
hundred to one fractional men, or exclusively machines. 

Elihu Burritt cultivated the man that was in him until 
his trade and his blacksmith's shop would not stay with 
him. They ceased to be useful to him. He could get 
a living in a way that was better for him. Benjamin 
Franklin was an excellent printer, but he used his trade 
only as a means. The development of his mind and 
his manhood went on above it. Printing with him was 
not an end of life. If it had been, we should have 
missed his words of wisdom ; some one else would have 
built the kite that exchanged the first kiss with elec- 
tricity, and less able men would have been set to do the 
work which he did so creditably in the management of 
his country's affairs. It is not necessary that you be 
learned blacksmiths or philosophical and diplomatic 
printers, but it is necessary that you be a man before 
your calling, behind your calling, above your calling, 
outside of your calling, and inside of it ; and that that 
calling modify your character no more than it would 
were it your neighbor's. 

If I have made my point plain to you, you can readily 
see that I attach very little value to the distinctions in 
society based on callings, and still less to those based 
on office. If a man be a man, let him thank his stars 



38 Tit comb" s Letters. 

that he is not ajustice of the peace. Of all the appetites 
that curse young men, the appetite for office seems to 
me to be the silliest and the meanest. There is nothing 
which fills me with greater disgust than to see a young 
man eager for the poor distinction which office confers. 
An office seeker, for the sake of honor, is constitution- 
ally, necessarily, mean. I have seen men begin at 
twenty-one as prudential committees in small school 
districts, and stick to office until everybody was sick of 
them. Whether it rained porridge or potatoes, paving 
stones or pearls, their dish was always out. They and 
their families always had to be cared for. 

Office always brings obligation and a certain kind of 
slavery. It brings something more than this — it brings 
insanity. A young man who allows himself to get a taste 
of it very rarely recovers. It is like tobacco, or opium, 
or brandy, producing a morbid appetite ; and we need 
all through the nation, a new society of reform. There 
should be a pledge circulated, and everywhere signed, 
promising total abstinence from office-seeking. To this 
every young man should put his name. There are 
chronic cases that may be considered hopeless, but the 
young can be saved. 

Do not let me be misunderstood ; I have spoken of 
the thirst for office for the sake of office. My belief is 
that office should neither be sought for nor lightly re- 
fused. The curse of our country is that office-seekers 
have made place so contemptible that good men will not 



The Blessings of Poverty, 39 

accept it, but so far keep themselves removed from 
politics that all the affairs of government fall into un- 
worthy hands. When a young man is sought for to fill 
a responsible place in public affairs — sought for and 
selected on the ground of fitness — he should decide 
whether he owes that duty to the public, and perform it 
well if he does. Office was properly regarded in the 
" good old colony times." Then it was considered a 
hinderance to business, and almost or quite a hardship ; 
so much so that laws were passed, in some instances, 
compelling men to accept office, or pay a fine. So I 
would have you to do your duty to the public at all times, 
and especially in seeing that office-seekers, by profession 
or constant practice, are crowded from the track and 
worthy men put on. 



LETTER VI. 

FOOD AND PHYSICAL CULTURE. 

Man is the noblest growth our realms supply, 
And souls are ripened in our northern sky. 

— Mrs. Barbauld. 

I HAVE noticed that most writers of books for young 
men have a good deal to say about diet and regimen, 
and physical culture, and all that sort of thing, those 
knowing the least of these important subjects invariably 
being the most elaborate and specific in their treatment 
of them. There have been some awful sins committed 
in this business. All the spare curses I accumulate 
I dedicate to those white-livered, hatchet-faced, thin- 
blooded, scrawny reformers, who prescribe sawdust 
puddings and plank beds, and brief sleep, and early 
walks, and short commons for the rising generation. I 
despise them ; and if there is a being who always touches 
the profoundest depths of my sympathy, it is a young 
man who has become a victim to their notions. It is a 
hard sight to see a young man with the pluck all taken 
out of him by a meagre diet — his whole nature starve^ 
degenerated, emasculated. 



Food and Physical Culture. 41 

I propose to apply a little common sense to this busi- 
ness. If I have a likely Durham steer, which I wish to 
have grow into the full development of his breed, I keep 
him on something more than a limited quantity of bog 
hay. I do not stir him up with a pitchfork before he 
has his nap out, and insist on his being driven ten miles 
before he has anything to eat. I do not take pains to 
give him the meanest bed I can find for him. I know 
perfectly well that that animal will not grow up strong 
and sound, fat and full, the pride of the farm and the 
stall, unless I give him an abundance of the best food, 
a clean and comfortable place to sleep in, and just as 
long naps as he sees fit to take. The horse, which in 
its organization more nearly approaches man tharu> the 
steer, is still more sensitive to the influence of generous 
living. How much pluck and spirit will a horse get out 
of a ton of rye straw ? The truth is, that a good and 
abundant diet is not only essential to the highest physi- 
cal health and development of man, but it modifies very 
importantly the development and manifestation of the 
soul. A man cannot acquire courage by feeding on 
theories and milk. An Englishman cannot fight without 
beef in his belly ; and no more can any of us. 

It may be objected to this that we do not wish for a 
great animal development in man. I say we do. I 
declare that the more perfect a man can make his ani- 
mal nature the better. That animal nature is the asso- 
ciate — home — servant — of -the soul. If it be not well 



42 TitcomVs Letters. 

developed, in all its organs and in all its functions, it 
will neither give a generous entertainment to the spirit- 
ual thing that dwells in it, nor serve it with vigor and 
efficiency. If strong meat nurses your passions, let it ; it 
does not nurse your passions any more than it nurses all 
the rest of you, and if you grow symmetrically where is 
the harm? Besides, what would you be without pas- 
sions ? They are the impelling forces of life. A man 
with no passion is as useless in the world as if he were 
without brains. He cannot even acquire the possession 
of virtue, but is obliged to content himself with inno- 
cence. If God gave passions to a man, he gave them 
to him for a natural, full development ; and the grandest 
type of man we see is that in which we find fully de- 
veloped and thoroughly trained passions ; and a soul 
which has not these among its motive forces is like a 
sailor out at sea, in a boat without oars. This idea that 
the body is something to be contemned, that its growth 
and development must necessarily antagonize with the 
best growth and development of the soul, is essentially 
impious. No matter where it started — it is all wrong. 
A perverted and perverting passion is a fearful thing, 
but a passion in its place is like everything that God 
makes, "very good." 

I would have you properly understand this kind of 
talk. I counsel the use of no food that tends to the 
stimulation of one portion of your system more than 
another, but I ask you to remember that the best food 



Food and Physical Culture. 43 

is not too good for you, and that, unless you have a 
perverted appetite, there is very little danger of your 
eating too much of it. If I were to be charged with 
the special mission of degrading a nation, in mind and 
body — stunting the form, and weakening in the same 
proportion the mental and moral nature — there is no 
way in which I could so readily accomplish my object 
as through food. No nation can preserve its vitality, 
and its tendency to progress, with a diet of pork and 
potatoes. Nothing but the cerealia and the ruminantia 
will do for this — nothing but bread and muscle. 

I wish I could take you to one of those institutions 
which will be found in nearly every State, where the 
outcast and pauper children are gathered for shelter, 
care, and -culture. They come from the gutters, where 
they have lived on garbage and cold potatoes. Their 
eyes are red around the edges and very weak, their 
muscles are flabby, their skin is lifeless in color and in 
fact. Their minds are as dull as the minds of brutes, 
and their faces give the impression almost of idiotic 
stupidity. In six months, wheat and corn bread give 
them a new body, and a new soul ; and it would be 
difficult to find a brighter set of faces than fill those 
crowded halls and illuminate the noisy playgrounds. 

Therefore, I say to you, young men, however falsely 
you may deal with your back, be honest with your 
stomach. Feed well — as well as you can afford to feed. 
Sleep well. If Benjamin, Franklin ever originated the 



44 Titcomtfs Letters. 

maxim, (i six hours of sleep for a man, seven for a wo- 
man, and eight for a fool," he ought uniformly to have 
practised by the rule of the last number. Young man, 
if you are a student, or are engaged in any severe 
mental occupation, sleep just as long as you can sleep 
soundly. Lying in bed from laziness is another thing 
entirely. 

Sleep is a thing that bells have no more business to 
interfere with, than with prayers and sermons. God is 
re-creating us. We are as unconscious as we were be- 
fore we were born ; and while he holds us there, feed- 
ing anew the springs of life, and infusing fresh fire into 
our brains, and preparing us for the work of another 
day, the pillow is as sacred as a sanctuary. If any 
fanatic has made you believe that it is good for you to 
be violently awakened from your sleep at an early hour, 
and to go out into the damp, raw air, morning after 
morning, with your fast unbroken, and your body unfor- 
tified by the stimulus of food, forget him and his coun- 
sels, and take the full measure of your rest. When you 
get your breakfast down, take your exercise if you have 
time, or wait until a later hour in the day. Just as 
much labor can be accomplished in ten hours as in four- 
teen, with more efficiency and less fatigue, when rest 
and bodily exercise are properly taken. 

But physical culture — what is that ? A very impor- 
tant thing, I assure you. Some of you get this in your 
employments, and are growing up with manly frames 



Food and Physical Culture. 45 

and strong arms. But there are others who are coming 
up delicately, with spindling shanks, and narrow shoul- 
ders, and flat chests, and weak arms — great babies, with 
soft hands and soft muscles, and not enough of physical 
prowess to undertake to carry a disputed point with the 
cook in the kitchen. How a woman ever makes up 
her mind to love such a man as this is a mystery to 
me. A feminine man is a masculine monster, and no 
woman with unperverted instincts can love and marry 
him. A true woman loves a pair of good strong arms, 
fastened to a pair of broad shoulders, for they can de- 
fend her, provide for her, and — but I wander from my 
subject. 

Physical culture perfects a very important portion of 
the work which good feeding begins. The best mate- 
rial supplied to the mouth, assimilated by the process 
of digestion, and carried by the blood to the muscles 
and all the other structures of the body, is essential ; 
but these organs, when constructed and supplied, need 
not only thorough training for the development of power 
and the acquisition of facility, but for the preservation 
of their harmony and health. God sets all the little 
children playing for this. He lays the necessity of play 
upon them, and those restless little fellows that are 
always sliding, or skating, or wrestling, or running, are 
all inspired by a divine impulse. Those little brothers 
of yours who drive you half insane by their noise, who 
will not sit upon your knee a minute without some fresh 



46 TitcomPs Letters. 

twist of their bodies, are discharging their primary 
Christian duties. 

A new world, tossed into space by the Creative Hand, 
informed with its laws of motion, and set spinning on its 
axis and careering around its orbit, never stops. It is 
only the boy who gets lazy as he grows older. God puts 
him in motion at first, and teaches him to use every 
physical power he possesses, and he does it faithfully at 
the beginning. Children who sit still do not live. The 
mission of play does not cease with childhood. When 
labor is not capable of doing for you what play has done, 
and when you have no regular task for your bodily pow- 
ers, you are to play still. Walking and riding, boxing 
and fencing, playing ball, pitching quoits, rowing and 
bowling — all these are as legitimate to the man as the 
simpler sports are to the boy, and are in a degree essen- 
tial to his happiness and usefulness. 

I should be unjust to the age were I to omit the men- 
tion of a special point of " physical culture " which has 
been long neglected. You find as you come into man's 
estate, that hair has a tendency to grow upon your face. 
It is the mark by which God meant that men and wo- 
men should be distinguished from each other in the 
crowd. That hair was placed there in infinite wisdom, 
but your fathers have been cutting it off from their chins 
in small crops for thirty to fifty years, thus impugning 
Nature's policy, wasting precious time, drawing a great 
deal of good blood, creating a great deal of bad, and 



Food and Physical Culture. 47 

trying to erase from their faces the difference which was 
intended to be maintained between them and those of 
women. If you are a man, and have a beard, wear it. 
You know it was made to wear. It is enough to make a 
man with a decent complement of information and a 
common degree of sensibility (and a handsome beard) 
deny his kind, to see these smooth-faced men around 
the streets, and actually showing themselves in female 
society ! Let us have one generation of beards ! 



LETTER VII. 

SOCIAL DUTIES AND PRIVILEGES. 

Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, 
Pursue the triumph and partake the gale? 

— Pope. 
The primal duties shine aloft like stars ; 
The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, 
Are scatter' d at the feet of man like flowers. 

— Wordsworth. 

1 PROPOSE in this letter to talk to you concerning 
your relations to society. Many, and I may say 
most young men fail for many years to get hold of the 
idea that they are members of society. They seem to 
suppose that the social machinery of the world is self- 
operating. They cast their first ballot with an emotion 
of pride, perhaps, but are sure to pay their first tax with 
a groan. They see political organizations in active ex- 
istence ; the parish, and the church, and other impor- 
tant bodies that embrace in some form of society all 
men, are successfully operated ; and yet these young 
men have no part or lot in the matter. They do not 
think of giving a day's time to society. They do not 



Social Duties and Privileges. 49 

think of giving anything to society. They have an idea 
that the business of society is to look after them ; that 
they are to be provided for, that seats are to be fur- 
nished to them in the churches gratis, that the Lyceum 
is to be kept up for their amusement — that all social 
movements whatsoever are to be organized and operated 
without their aid, or that they exist as legitimate ob- 
jects of their criticism. This is the very stupidity of 
selfishness. Some of you haven't known the fact until 
now, and are not very much to blame. It is one of the 
incidents of what Fanny Kemble once called your "age 
of detestability." 

One of the first things a young man should do is to 
see that he is acting his part in society. The earlier 
this is begun the better. I think that the opponents of 
secret societies in colleges have failed to estimate the 
benefit which it must be to every member to be obliged 
to contribute to the support of his particular organiza- 
tion, and to assume personal care and responsibility as 
a member. If these societies have a tendency to teach 
the lessons of which I speak, they are a blessed thing. 
Many of the ills of society originate in the fact that its 
burdens are unequally borne, and that the duties of in- 
dividuals to it are not discharged. Therefore I say to 
every young man, begin early to do for the social insti- 
tutions in which you have your life. If you have intel- 
lect and accomplishments, give them to the elevation 
and delight of the circle in which you move. If you 
3 



So TitcomVs Letters. 

have none of these, show an accommodating disposition 
by attending the sewing circle and holding yarn for the 
girls. Do your part, and be a man among men. As- 
sume your portion of social responsibility, and see that 
you discharge it well. If you do not do this, then you 
are mean, and society has the right to despise you just 
as much as it chooses to do so. You are, to use a word 
more emphatic than agreeable, a sneak, and have not a 
claim upon your neighbors for a single polite word. 

Young men have all noticed how easily some of their 
number get into society, and how others remain out of 
a good social circle always. They are very apt to think 
that society has not discharged its duties to them. Now 
all social duties are reciprocal. Society, as it is called, 
is far more apt to pay its dues to the individual than the 
individual to society. Have you, young man, who are 
at home whining over the fact that you cannot get into 
society, done anything to give you a claim to social 
recognition ? Are you able to make any return for so- 
cial recognition and social privileges ? Do you know 
anything ? What kind of coin do you propose to pay 
in the discharge of the obligation which comes upon 
you with social recognition ? In other words, as a re- 
turn for what you wish to have society do for you, what 
can you do for society ? This is a very important ques- 
tion — more important to you than to society. The 
question is, whether you will be a member of society 
by right, or by courtesy. If you have so mean a spirit 



Social Duties and Privileges. 51 

as to be content to be a beneficiary of society — to re- 
ceive favors and confer none — you have no business in 
the society to which you aspire. You are an exacting, 
conceited fellow. 

You ask me what society would have of you. Any- 
thing that you possess which has value in society. So- 
ciety is not particular on this point. Can you act in a 
charade ? Can you dance ? Can you tell a story well ? 
Have you travelled, and have you a pleasant faculty of 
telling your adventures ? Are you educated, and able 
to impart valuable ideas and general information ? Have 
you vivacity in conversation ? Can you sing ? Can you 
play whist, and are you willing to assist those to a pleas- 
ant evening who are not able to stand through a party ? 
Do you wear a good coat, and can you bring good dress 
into the ornamental department of society ? Are you 
up to anything in the way of private theatricals ? If 
you do not possess a decent degree of sense can you 
talk decent nonsense ? Are you a good beau, and are 
you willing to make yourself useful in waiting on the 
ladies on all occasions ? Have you a good set of teeth, 
which you are willing to show whenever the wit of the 
company gets off a good thing ? Are you a true, 
straightforward, manly fellow, with whose healthful and 
uncorrupted nature it is good for society to come in 
contact? In short, do you possess anything of any so- 
cial value ? If you do, and are willing to impart it, 
society will yield itself to your touch. If you have noth- 



52 TitcomUs Letters. 

ing, then society, as such, owes you nothing. Christian 
philanthropy may put its arm round you, as a lonely 
young man, about to spoil for want of something, but 
it is very sad and humiliating for a young man to be 
brought to that. There are people who devote them- 
selves to nursing young men, and doing them good. If 
they invite you to tea, go by all means, and try your 
hand. If, in the course of the evening, you can prove 
to them that your society is desirable, you have won a 
point. Don't be patronized. 

Young men are very apt to get into a morbid state 
of mind, which disinclines them to social intercourse. 
They become devoted to business with such exclusive- 
ness, that all social intercourse is irksome. They go 
out to tea as if they were going to jail, and drag them- 
selves to a party as to an execution. This disposition 
is thoroughly morbid, and to be overcome by going 
where you are invited, always, and at any sacrifice of 
feeling. Don't shrink from contact with anything but 
bad morals. Men who affect your unhealthy minds with 
antipathy, will prove themselves very frequently to be 
your best friends and most delightful companions. Be- 
cause a man seems uncongenial to you, who are 
squeamish and foolish, you have no right to shun him. 
We become charitable by knowing men. We learn to 
love those whom we have despised by rubbing against 
them. Do you not remember some instance of meeting 
a man or woman at a watering-place whom you have 



Social Duties and Privileges. 53 

never previously known or cared to know — an individ- 
ual, perhaps, against whom you have entertained the 
strongest prejudices — but to whom you became bound 
by a life long friendship through the influence of a three 
days' intercourse ? Yet if you had not thus met, you 
would have carried through life the idea that it would be 
impossible for you to give your fellowship to such an in- 
dividual. 

God has introduced into human character infinite 
variety, and for you to say that you do not love and will 
not associate with a man because he is unlike you, is 
not only foolish but wrong. You are to remember that 
in the precise manner and degree in which a man dif- 
fers from you, do you differ from him ; and that from 
his standpoint you are naturally as repulsive to him as 
he, from your standpoint, is to you. So, leave all this 
talk of congeniality to silly girls and transcendental 
dreamers. Do your business in your own way, and 
concede to every man the privilege which you claim for 
yourself. The more you mix with men, the less you 
will be disposed to quarrel, and the more charitable and 
liberal will you become. The fact that you do not un- 
derstand a man, is quite as likely to be your fault as his. 
There are a good many chances in favor of the conclu- 
sion that, if you fail to like an individual whose ac- 
quaintance you make, it is through your own ignorance 
and illiberality. So I say, meet every man honestly ; 
seek to know him ; and you will find that in those points 



54 TitcomVs Letters. 

in which he differs from you rests his power to instruct 
you, enlarge you, and do you good. Keep your heart 
open for everybody, and be sure that you shall have your 
reward. You shall find a jewel under the most uncouth 
exterior ; and associated with homeliest manners and 
the oddest ways and the ugliest faces, you will find rare 
virtues, fragrant little humanities, and inspiring heroisms. 
Again : you can have no influence unless you are 
social. An unsocial man is as devoid of influence as an 
ice-peak is of verdure. If you take a peep at the Hud- 
son River some bright morning, you will see, ploughing 
grandly along towards the great metropolis, a magnifi- 
cent steamer, the silver wave peeling off from her cut- 
water, and a million jewels sparkling in her wake, pass- 
ing all inferior barks in sublime indifference, and send- 
ing yacht and skiff dancing from her heel. Right be- 
hind her, you shall see a smaller steamer, the central 
motive power of a plateau of barges, loaded to their 
guards with the produce of thousands of well tilled 
acres. She has fastened herself to these barges by lines 
invisible to you. They may be homely things, but they 
contain the food of the nation. Her own speed may be 
retarded by this association, but the work she does for 
commerce is tenfold greater than that accomplished by 
the grand craft that shuns abrasion as misfortune, and 
seeks to secure nothing but individual dignity and fast 
time. It is through social contact and absolute social 
value alone that you can accomplish any great social 



Social Duties and Privileges. 55 

good. It is through the invisible lines which you are able 
to attach to the minds with which you are brought into as- 
sociation alone that you can tow society, with its deeply 
freighted interests, to the great haven of your hope. 

The revenge which society takes upon the man who 
isolates himself, is as terrible as it is inevitable. The 
pride which sits alone, and will do nothing for society 
because society disgusts it, or because its possessor does 
not at once have accorded to him his position, will have 
the privilege of sitting alone in its sublime disgust till it 
drops into the grave. The world sweeps by the isolat- 
ed man, carelessly, remorselessly, contemptuously. He 
has no hold upon society, because he is not a part of it. 
The boat that refuses to pause in its passage, and throw 
a line to smaller craft, will bring no tow into port. So 
let me tell you, that if you have an honorable desire in 
your heart for influence, you must be a thoroughly social 
man. You cannot move men until you are one of them. 
They will not follow you until they have heard your 
voice, shaken your hand, and fully learned your princi- 
ples and your sympathies. It makes no difference how 
much you know, or how much you are capable of doing. 
You may pile accomplishment upon acquisition moun- 
tain high ; but if you fail to be a social man, demonstrat- 
ing to society that your lot is with the rest, a little child 
with a song in its mouth, and a kiss for all, and a pair 
of innocent hands to lay upon the knees, shall lead more 
hearts and change the direction of more lives than you. 



LETTER VIII. 

THE REASONABLENESS AND DESIRABLENESS Ot 
RELIGION. 

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends ! 

Hath he not always treasures, always friends, 

The great good man? Three treasures, love and light, 

And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath ; 

And three firm friends, more sure than day and night — 

Himself, his maker, and the angel death ? 

— Coleridge. 

YOUNG men, I hate cant, and I do not know exactly 
how to say what I wish to say in this letter ; but 
I desire to talk to you rationally upon the subject of re- 
ligion. Now don't stop reading at the mention of this 
word, but read this letter through. The fact is, it is the 
most important letter I have undertaken to write to you. 
I know you, I think, very thoroughly. Life looks so 
good to you, and you are anticipating so much from it, 
that religion comes to you, and comes over you, like a 
shadow. You associate it with long faces, and prayer- 
meetings, and psalm-singing, and dull sermons, and 
grave reproofs and stupidity. Your companions are 



The Reasonableness of Religion. S7 

gay, and so are you. Perhaps you make a jest of reli- 
gion ; but deep down in your heart of hearts you know 
that you are not treating religion fairly. You know per- 
fectly well that there is something in it for you, and that 
you must have it. You know that the hour will come 
when you will specially need it. But you wish to put 
it off, and " enjoy life " first. This results very much 
from the kind of preaching you have always listened to. 
You have been taught that human life is all vanity, that 
these things which so greatly delight you are vain and 
sinful, that your great business in this world is to be 
saved, and that you are only to be saved by learning to 
despise things that you love, and to love things which 
you despise. You feel that this is unnatural and irra- 
tional. I think it is, myself. Now let me talk to you. 

Go with me, if you please, to the next station-house, 
and look off upon that line of railroad. It is as straight 
as an arrow. Out run the iron lines, glittering in the 
sun, — out, as far as we can see, until, converging almost 
to a single thread, they pierce the sky. What were 
those rails laid in that way for ? It is a road, is it ? 
Try your cart or your coach there. The axletrees are 
too narrow, and you go bumping along upon the sleep- 
ers. Try a wheelbarrow. You cannot keep it on the 
rail. But that road was made for something. Now go 
with me to the locomotive shop. What is this ? We 
are told it is a locomotive. What is a locomotive ? 
Why, it is a carriage moved by steam. But it is very 
3* 



58 Tit comb's Letters. 

heavy. The wheels would sink into a common road to 
the axle. That locomotive can never run on a common 
road, and the man is a fool who built it. Strange that 
men will waste time and money in that way ! But stop 
a moment. Why wouldn't those wheels just fit those 
rails ? We measure them, and then we go to the track 
and measure its gauge. That solves the difficulty. 
Those rails were intended for the locomotive, and the 
locomotive for the rails. They are good for nothing 
apart. The locomotive is not even safe anywhere else. 
If it should get off, after it is once on, it would run into 
rocks and stumps, and bury itself in sands or swamps 
beyond recovery. 

Young man, you are a locomotive. You are a thing 
that goes by a power planted inside of you. You are 
made to go. In fact, considered as a machine, you are 
very far superior to a locomotive. The maker of the 
locomotive is man ; your maker is man's maker. You 
are as different from a horse, or an ox, or a camel, as a 
locomotive is different from a wheelbarrow, a cart, or a 
coach. Now do you suppose that the being who made 
you — manufactured your machine, and put into it the 
motive power — did not make a special road for you to 
run upon ? My idea of religion is that it is a railroad 
for a human locomotive, and that just so sure as it 
undertakes to run upon a road adapted only to animal 
power, will it bury its wheels in the sand, dash itself 
among rocks, and come to inevitable wreck. If you 



The Reasonableness of Religion. 59 

don't believe this, try the other thing. Here are forty 
roads, suppose you choose one of them, and see where 
you come out. Here is the dram-shop road. Try it. 
Follow it, and see how long it will be before you come 
to a stump and a smash-up. Here is the road of sen- 
sual pleasure. You are just as sure to bury your wheels 
in the dirt as you try it. Your machine is too heavy 
for that track altogether. Here is the winding, uncer- 
tain path of frivolity. There are morasses on each side 
of it, and, with the headway that you are under, you 
will be sure, sooner or later, to pitch into one of them. 
Here is the road of philosophy, but it runs through a 
country from which the light of Heaven is shut out ; and 
while you may be able to keep your machine right side 
up, it will only be by feeling your way along in a 
clumsy, comfortless kind of style, and with no certainty 
of ever arriving at the heavenly terminus. Here is the 
road of skepticism. That is covered with fog, and a 
fence runs across it within ten rods. Don't you see that 
your machine was never intended to run on those roads ? 
Don't you know that it never was, and don't you know 
that the only track upon which it can run safely is the 
religious track ? Don't you know that just as long as 
you keep your wheels on that track, wreck is impossi- 
ble ? Don't you know that it is the only track on which 
wreck is not certain? I know it, if you don't ; and I 
tell you that on that track which God has laid down ex- 
pressly for your soul to run upon, your soul will find free 



60 Titcomb's Letters. 

play for all its wheels, and an unobstructed and happ^ 
progress. It is straight and narrow, but it is safe and 
solid, and furnishes the only direct route to the heavenly 
city. Now, if God made your soul, and made religion 
for it, you are a fool if you refuse to place yourself on 
the track. You cannot prosper anywhere else, and youi 
machine will not run anywhere else. 

I suppose that a nice casuist would say that I had 
thus far talked only of morality — only of obedience to 
law. But I was only dealing with the subject in the 
rough, and trying to show you how rational a thing re- 
ligion is, and to bring to your comprehension your nat- 
ural relation to it. I know that the rule of your life is 
selfishness. I know that you are sinful, polluted, wil- 
ful, and that you act from low motives. I know that the 
race to which you belong have all fallen from innocence, 
and that they have so thoroughly put out the light that 
God meant should light every man who comes into the 
world, that, supplementary to the natural moral system, 
He has, in great benevolence, devised a scheme of reli- 
gion, embracing salvation. This is Christianity, and its 
purpose is to get you back upon the track where the 
race first started. It is a divine contrivance, or plan, 
for accomplishing this purpose. 

Jesus Christ saw the whole mass of human machinery 
off the track, and going to irremediable ruin just so 
truly as he did not interfere to prevent it. He came 
and told us all how to get back, through repentance, 



The Reasonableness of Religion. 61 

faith, reformation, the surrender of will, the abnegation 
of self, and the devotion of the heart in love to God and 
good will to men. He placed himself upon the track 
and ran over it, not only showing us how to get there 
ourselves, but showing us how to run when there. In 
other words, he exhibited to us a true human life. 
Then, when he had cleared away all the rubbish from 
the track, shown us how to get upon it again, how to run 
when we get there, how to avoid and repair accidents 
by the way, — when he had done all this, and set his 
agents at work in carrying out his plans, he went back 
to Heaven, and now looks down to see how the work 
goes on. 

Young men, / believe this. I am sure it is true, and 
I know, and God knows that this plan which he has 
devised to save you and make it possible for you to lead 
a true human life, which shall ultimate in life's highest 
issues, is the only one which can save you. I know 
that you can never be happy until you have heartily and 
practically accepted this religion ; and for you to go on, 
year after year, carelessly, thoughtlessly, spoiling your- 
self, growing harder, meaner, more polluted, with no 
love to God and outgushing benevolence to men, is an 
insult to Jesus Christ and a brutal wrong to that which 
he came to save. The fact is that sin is the most un- 
manly thing in God's world. You never were made for 
sin and selfishness. You were made for love and obedi- 
ence. If you think it is manly to reject religion, and 



62 TitcomVs Letters. 

the noble obligations it imposes upon you, it only shows 
how strong a hold the devil has upon you. It shows 
how degraded you are ; how the beast that is in you 
domineers over the soul that is in you. 

Young man, your personal value depends entirely 
upon your possession of religion. You are worth to 
yourself what you are capable of enjoying ; you are) 
worth to society the happiness you are capable of im- 
parting. To yourself, without religion, you are worth 
very little. A man whose aims are low, whose motives 
are selfish, who has in his heart no adoration for the 
great God, and no love of his Christ, whose will is not 
subordinate to the Supreme will — gladly and gratefully 
— who has no faith, no tenable hope of a happy immor- 
tality, no strong-armed trust that with his soul it shall be 
well in all the future, cannot be worth very much to 
himself. Neither can such a man be worth very much 
to society, because he has not that to bestow which 
society most needs for its prosperity and its happiness. 
A locomotive off the track is worth nothing to its owner 
or the public so long as it is off the track. The condi- 
tions of its legitimate and highest value are not complied 
with. It cannot be operated satisfactorily to the owner, 
or usefully to the public, because it is not where it was 
intended to run by the man who made it. 

Just look at the real object of religion, and see how 
rational it is. It is the placing of your souls in harmony 
with God and his laws. God is the perfect, supreme 



The Reasonableness of Religion. 63 

soul, and your souls are the natural offspring of that 
soul. Your souls are made in the image of his, and, 
like all created things, are subject to certain immutable 
laws. The transgression of these laws damages your 
souls, warps them, stunts their growth, outrages them. 
Do you not see that you can only be manly and attain a 
manly growth by preserving your true relations and like- 
ness to the father soul, and a strict obedience to the 
laws of your being ? God has given you appetites, and 
he meant you should indulge them, and that they should 
be sources of happiness to you ; but always in a way 
which shall not interfere with your spiritual growth and 
development. He gave you passions, and they are just 
as sacred as any part of you, but they are to be under 
the strict control of your reason and your conscience. 
He gave you desires for earthly happiness. He planted 
in you the love of human praise, delight in society, the 
faculty to enjoy all his works. He gave you his works to 
enjoy, but you can only enjoy them truly when you re- 
gard them as blessings from the great Giver, to feed and 
not starve your higher natures. There is not a true joy 
in life which you are required to deprive yourself of, in 
being faithful to him and his laws. Without obedience 
to law, your souls cannot be healthful, and it is only to 
a healthful soul that pleasure comes with its natural — 
its divine — aroma. Is a nose stuffed with drugs capable 
of perceiving the delicate fragrance of the rose ? Is the 
soul that intensifies its pleasures as an object of life 



64 Titcomb's Letters. 

capable of a healthful appreciation of even purely sen- 
sual pleasures ? The idea of a man's enjoying life with- 
out religion is absurd. 

I have been thus particular upon this point, because 
I love you, and because I know that without it, or in- 
dependent of it, all my previous talk has very little sig- 
nificance. I have reasoned the thing to you on its 
merits, and I urge it upon your immediate attention, as 
a matter of duty and policy. The matter of duty you 
understand. I do not need to talk to you about that. 
Now about the policy. It will not be five years, proba- 
bly, before every one of you will be involved, head and 
ears, in business. Some of you are thus involved 
already. You grow hard as you grow older. You get 
habits of thought and life which incrust you. You be- 
come surrounded with associations which hold you, so 
that the longer you live without religion the worse it 
will be for you, and the less probable will be your adop- 
tion of a religious life. If you expect to be a man, you 
must begin now. It is so easy, comparatively, to do it 
now ! 

With this paragraph I cease to direct my words par- 
ticularly to you. What I have said to you, I have said 
heartily and conscientiously. I shall see you some 
time. We are none of us to live very long, but if we 
all act the manly part we were sent here to act, and are 
true to God and ourselves, we shall be gathered into a 
great kingdom, whose throne will be occupied by the 



The Reasonableness of Religion. 6$ 

founder of our religion. During some golden hour of 
that cloudless day, sitting or straying upon some heav- 
enly hill, watching upon the far-stretching plains the 
tented hosts of God's redeemed, or marking the shadow 
of an angel's flight across the bright mirror of the river 
of life, I shall say something about these letters to you. 
I shall look you in the face as I say it, to see if you are 
moved to an emotion of gratitude or of gratification ; 
and if you should happen to tell me that they made you 
better, that they led you to a higher development, that 
they directed you to a manly and a godly life, I should 
press your hand, and if *I should keep from weeping it 
would be more than I can do now, 



LETTERS 10 YOUNG WOMEN. 



LETTERS TO YOUNG WOMEN. 



LETTER I. 

DRESS— ITS PROPRIETIES AND ABUSES. 

A creature not too bright or good 

For human nature's daily food ; 

For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles. 



A perfect woman, nobly planned 
To warn, to comfort, and command. 

— Wordsworth. 

I have observed, among all nations, that the women ornament themselves 
more than the men. 

— John Ledyard. 

1 ACCOUNT a pure, beautiful, intelligent, and well 
bred woman, the most attractive object of vision 
and contemplation in the world. As mother, sister, 
and wife, such a woman is an angel of grace and good- 
ness, and makes a heaven of the home which is sancti- 
fied and glorified by her presence. As an element of 



70 TitcomVs Letters. 

society she invites into finest demonstrations all that is 
good in the heart, and shames into secrecy and silence 
all that is unbecoming and despicable. There may be 
more of greatness and of glory in the higher develop- 
ments of manhood, but, surely, in womanhood- God 
most delights to show the beauty of the holiness and the 
sweetness of the love of which he is the infinite source. 
It is for this reason that a girl or a young woman is a 
very sacred thing to me. It is for this reason that a 
silly young woman or a vicious one makes me sigh or 
shudder. It is for this reason that I pray that I may 
write worthily to young women. 

In getting at a piece of work, it is often necessary, as 
a preliminary, to clear away rubbish ; and I say at first 
that I do not write to masculine young women. I deem 
masculine women abnormal women, and I therefore re- 
fer all those women who wish to vote, who delight in the 
public exhibition of themselves, who bemoan the fate 
which drapes them in petticoats, who quarrel with St 
Paul and their lot, who own more rights than they pos- 
sess ; and fail to fulfil the duties of their sphere while 
seeking for its enlargement— I refer all these to the eight 
letters recently addressed to young men. They will 
find some practical remarks in those letters upon mas- 
culine development and a manly discharge of life's 
duties. My theory may be very unsound, but it is my 
belief, that the first natural division of the human race 
is marked by the line that distinguishes the sexes. I 



Dress — Its Proprieties and Abuses. Ji 

believe that a true woman is just as different from a true 
man as a true man is different from a true woman. 
The nature and the constitution of the masculine are 
one, and the nature and constitution of the feminine are 
another. So of the glory attached to each ; so of the 
functions ; so of the sphere. Therefore, if there be 
" strong-minded women " who read these letters, I bid 
them, with all kindness, to turn to the other series for 
that which will most benefit them. 

I shall talk first of that thing which, worthily or most 
unworthily, engages the minds of all young women, viz. 
- — DRESS. I speak of this first, because it is part of the 
rubbish which I wish to get out of the way before com- 
mencing more serious work ; and yet this is not alto- 
gether trivial. I believe in dress. I believe that God 
delights in beautiful things, and as he has never made 
anything more beautiful than woman, I believe that that 
mode of dressing the form and face which best harmo- 
nizes with their beauty, is that which pleases him best. 
I believe the mode of female dress prevalent among the 
Shaker women is absolute desecration. To take any- 
thing which infinite ingenuity and power have made 
beautiful, and capable by the gracefulness of its form 
and the harmony of its parts of producing the purest 
pleasure to the observer, and clothe it with a meal-bag 
and crown it with a sugar-scoop, is an irreverent trifling 
with sacred things which should be punished by mulct 
and imprisonment. 



72 TitcontVs Letters. 

It is a shame to any woman who has the means to 
dress well, to dress meanly, and it is a particular shame 
for any woman to do this in the name of religion. I 
have seen women who, believing the fashionable devo- 
tion to dress to be sinful, as it doubtless is, go to that 
extreme in plainness of attire which, if it prove anything 
touching the power that governs them, proves that it is 
a power which is at war with man's purest instincts, and 
most elevated tastes. I say it is a shame for a woman 
to dress unattractively who has it in her power to dress 
well. It is every woman's duty to make herself pleas- 
ant and attractive by such raiment and ornament as 
shall best accord with the style of beauty with which she 
is endowed. The beauty of woman's person was in- 
tended to be a source of pleasure — the fitting accom- 
paniment of that which in humanity is the most nearly 
allied to the angelic. Surely, if God plants flowers 
upon a clod they may rest upon a woman's bosom, or 
glorify a woman's hair ! 

But dress is a subordinate thing, because beauty is 
not the essential thing. Beauty is very desirable ; it is 
a very great blessing ; it is a misfortune to possess an 
unattractive person ; but there are multitudes of women 
with priceless excellences of heart and mind who are 
not beautiful. Beauty, so far as it is dependent upon 
form and color, is a material thing, and belongs to the 
grosser nature. Therefore, dress is a subject which 
should occupy comparatively few of the thoughts of a 



Dress — Its Proprieties and Abuses. 73 

true woman, whether beautiful or not. To dress well, 
becomingly, even richly, if it can be afforded, is a wo- 
man's duty. To make the dress of the person the ex- 
ponent of personal taste, is a woman's privilege. But to 
make dress the grand object of life ; to think of nothing 
and talk of nothing but that which pertains to the 
drapery and artificial ornament of the person, is to 
transform the trick of a courtesan into amusement for a 
fool. There are multitudes of women with whom dress 
is the all-prevalent thought. They think of it, dream 
of it, live for it. It is enough to disgust one to hear 
them talk about it. It goes with them from the gaiety 
of the ball room into the weeds of the house of death. 
They use it as a means for splitting grief into vulgar 
fractions, and are led out from great bereavements into 
the consolations of vanity, by the hands of numerators 
and denominators. They flatter one another, envy one 
another, hate one another — all on the score of dress- 
They go upon the street to show their dresses. They 
enter the house of God to display their bonnets. They 
actually prize themselves more highly for what they 
wear than for any charm of person or mind which they 
may possess ! 

One of the most vulgar and unbecoming things in the 
world is this devotion to dress, which, in many minds, 
grows into a form of insanity, and leads to the worship 
of dry goods and dress-makers. Now it will be impos- 
sible for me to give you special directions upon this 
4 



74 TitcontVs Letters. 

subject of dress. Your dress-maker and your books, 
and, better than all, your own taste and experience, 
will' tell you what colors become your complexion, what 
style of manufacture best accords with your form and 
style of movement. I shall only speak generally ; and 
I say, first, dress modestly. It is all well enough for 
little girls to show their necks, but for a woman to make 
her appearance in the society of young men with such 
displays of person as are made in what is so mistakenly 
called " full dress," is a shame to her. I know what 
fashion allows in this matter, and fashion has many sins 
to answer for. Thousands of girls dress in a manner 
that they would discard with horror and disgust, if they 
knew the trains of thought which are suggested by their 
presence. I know young men, and I know there is not 
one in one hundred who attends a " full dress party," 
and comes out as pure and worthy a man as he went in. 
There is not one in one hundred who does not hold the 
secret of a base thought suggested by the style of dress 
which he sees around him. This may tell very badly 
for young men. Doubtless it does ; but we are obliged 
to take things as we find them. The millennium has 
not dawned yet, and we have receded to a considerable 
distance from the era of human innocence. I tell you a 
fact ; and, if you are modest young women, you will 
heed its suggestions. If you choose to become the ob- 
jects of foul fancies among young men, whose respect 
you are desirous of securing, you know the way. 



Dress — Its Proprieties and Abuses. 75 

Again, shun peculiarities of dress which attract the 
attention '(of the vulgar. I know that a young woman 
can drescCin such a way as to excite a chaste and 
worthy admiration among her own sex as well as mine, 
and my judgment tells me that that is the proper dress 
for her to wear. I feel that it is right and well for her 
to dress like this, and that it is not right and well for 
her to dress otherwise. 

Again, dress in such a manner that your attire will not 
occupy your thoughts after it is upon you. Let every 
garment be well fitted and well put on — ugly in no 
point, fussy in no point, nor made of such noticeable 
material that you necessarily carry with you the con- 
sciousness that people around you are examining it. 
Make it always subordinate to yourself — tributary to 
your charms, rather than constituent of them. Then 
the society in which you move will see you, and not 
your housings and trappings. "Jane was dressed very 
becomingly," or "how well Jane looked," are very 
much more complimentary comments than "that was a 
splendid dress that Jane wore ; " and a tolerably acute 
mind may gather from these expressions the philosophy 
of the whole thing. 

There is, as a general thing, no excuse for attire 
which is not neat and orderly, at any time in the day. 
A thoroughly neat and orderly young woman is pre- 
sentable at any hour, whether she be in the kitchen or 
the parlor ; and I have seen specimens of womanhood 



y6 TitcomVs Letters. 

that were as attractive in their kitchens, with their tidy 
hair and their nine-penny calico, as in their ps]rlors at a 
later hour, robed in silk and busy at their e' ibroidery. 
Materials may be humble, but they may always be 
tastefully made and neatly kept. There art few habits 
that a young woman may acquire which, in 'the long 
run, will tend more to the preservation of her own self- 
respect than that of thorough tastefulness, appropriate- 
ness, and tidiness of dress, and certainly ve.y f e ,:v which 
will make her more agreeable to others. V 

So, I say, dress well if you can affo)d it, always 
neatly, never obtrusively, and always with a modest 
regard to rational ideas of propriety. Scorn the idea oh 
making dress in any way the great object of life. It is 
beneath you. A woman was made for something 
higher than a convenient figure for displaying dry goods 
and the possibilities of millinery and mantua-making. 



LETTER II. 

THE TRANSITION FROM GIRLHOOD TO WOMAN 
HOOD. 

O mirth and innocence ! O milk and water ! 
Ye happy mixtures of more happy days ! 

— Byron. 

We figure to ourselves the thing we like, and then we build it up as 
chance will have it, on the rock or sand. 

— Henry Taylor. 

EVERY young woman who has arrived at twenty 
years of age has passed through three dispensa- 
tions — the chaotic, the transitional, and the crystalline. 
The chaotic usually terminates with the adoption of the 
long skirt. Then commences the transitional dispen- 
sation, involving the process of crystallization. This 
process may go on feebly for years, or it may proceed 
so rapidly that two years will complete it. In some 
women, it is never completed, in consequence of a lack 
of inherent vital force, or a criminal disregard of the 
requisite conditions. . This transitional dispensation, 
which is better characterized by calling it the silly dis- 



78 TitcornVs Letters. 

pensation, is so full of dangers that it calls for a sepa- 
rate letter ; and this I propose to write now. 

The silly dispensation or stage of a young woman's 
life is marked by many curious symptoms, some of 
them indicative of disease. As the cutting of the natu- 
ral teeth is usually accompanied by various disorders, 
so the cutting of the spiritual teeth in women is very 
apt to exhibit its results in abnormal manifestations. 
They sometimes eat slate pencils and chalk, and some 
have been known to take kindly to broken bits of plas- 
tering. Others take a literary turn, and, not content 
with any number of epistles to female acquaintances, 
send contributions to the press, which the friendly and 
appreciative editor kindly and carefully returns, or as 
kindly and carefully loses, or fails to receive. Others 
still take to shopping and dawdling with clerks who 
have dawning beards, red cheeks, and frock coats with 
outside pockets, from which protrude white handker- 
chief-tips. Still others yoke themselves in pairs, drawn 
together by sympathetic attraction, and by community 
of mental exercise on the subject of beaux. You shall 
see them walking through the streets, locked arm in 
arm, plunging into the most charming confidences, or, 
if you happen to sleep in the house with them, you 
shall hear them talking in their chamber until, at mid- 
night, the monotonous hum of their voices has soothed 
you into sleep ; and the same voices, with the same un- 
broken hum, shall greet your ears in the morning. 



From Girllwod to Womanhood. 79 

Others take to solitude and long curls. They walk with 
their eyes down, murmuring to themselves, with th? 
impression that everybody is looking at them. 

If a young woman can be safely carried through this 
dispensation, the great step of life will have been gained. 
This is the era of hasty marriages, deathless attach- 
ments which last until they are superseded, and delib- 
erately formed determinations to live a maiden life, 
which endure until the reception of an offer of marriage. 
If, during this period, a young woman be at home, en- 
gaged more or less in the duties of the household, or, 
if she be engaged in study, with the healthful restraints 
and stimulus of general society about her, it is very well 
for her. But if she be among her mates constantly, with 
nothing to do, or if she be shut up in a boarding-school 
conducted on the high pressure principle, where imagin- 
ation is stimulated by restraint, and disobedience to law 
is provoked by its unreasonableness, it is indeed very 
bad for her. 

It is probable that the theatre is a school of vice 
rather than of virtue, that the ball-room is a promoter 
of dissipation, and that indiscriminate society has its 
temptations and its dangers ; but a female boarding- 
school, shut off from general society by law, its mem- 
bers lacking free exercise in the open air, denied the 
privilege of daily amusements, and presided over by 
teachers who fail to understand the nature of the pre- 
cious material they have in charge, is as much worse 



8o Tit comb's Letters. 

for mind and morals than all these combined, as can 
well be imagined. I know female boarding-schools that 
are properly conducted, whose teachers know what a 
girl is, and what she needs, and who contrive to lead 
her through this transitional passage of her life into a 
healthful and rational womanhood ; and I know others 
whose very atmosphere is that of fever. I know board- 
ing schools where beaux are the everlasting topic of 
conversation, and where an unhealthy imagination is so 
stimulated by irrational restraints and mutual fellow- 
feeling, that the foundation of nearly every character 
is necessarily laid in rottenness. 

If any young woman, in a boarding-school or out of 
it, should find herself a subject of any of the diseases 
which I have pointed out, she should seek a remedy at 
once. If she finds herself moved to go shopping for the 
simple purpose of talking with the clerks, let her re- 
member that she is not only doing an immodest and 
unbecoming thing, but that she is manifesting the 
symptom of that which is a dangerous mental disease. 
To begin with, she is doing a very silly thing. Again, 
she is doing that which compromises her in the eyes of 
all sensible young men. If she finds herself possessed 
with unaccountable proclivities to a mineral diet, or a 
foggy out-reaching for something or other that mani- 
fests itself in profound confidences with one similarly 
afflicted, or any one of a hundred absorbing sentimen- 
talisms, let her remember that she is mentally and mor- 



From Girlhood to Womanhood. 8 1 

ally sick, and that, for her own comfort and peace, she 
should seek at once for a remedy. Her only safety is 
in seeking direct contact with a healthier and more ad- 
vanced life, and by securing healthful occupation for all 
her powers, intellectual and physical. Dreams, imagi- 
nations, silly talk and twaddle about young men, yearn- 
ings after sympathetic hearts, the dandling of precious 
little thoughts about beaux on the knees of fancy, and 
all that sort of nonsense should be discarded — thrust 
out of the sacred precincts of the mind — as if they were 
so many foul reptiles. Get out of this feverish and un- 
healthy frame just as soon as possible, and walk forth 
into a more natural, dignified, and womanly life. 

A young woman at this age should remember that her 
special business is to fit herself for the duties of life. I 
would not deny to her the society of young men, when 
she has time for it, and a proper opportunity, but she 
should remember that she has nothing to do with beaux, 
nothing to do with thoughts of and calculations for mar- 
riage, nothing to do but to become, in the noblest way, 
a woman. She should remember that she is too young 
to know her own mind, and that, as a general thing, it 
is not worth knowing. Girlish attachments and girlish 
ideas of men are the silliest things in all the world. If 
you do not believe it, ask your mothers. Ninety-nine 
times in a hundred they will tell you that they did not 
marry the boy they fancied, before they had a right to 
fancy anybody. If you dream of matrimony for amuse- 



82 Tit comb's Letters. 

ment, and for the sake of killing time, I have this to 
say, that, considering the kind of young men you fancy, 
you can do quite as well by hanging a hat upon a hitch- 
ing-post, and worshipping it through your chamber win- 
dow. Besides, it is during this period of unsettled no- 
tions and really shifting attachments that a habit of flirt- 
ing and a love of it are generated. 

I suppose that coquetry, in its legitimate form, is 
among a woman's charms, and that there is a legitimate 
sphere for its employment, for, except in rare natures, 
it is a natural thing with your sex. Nature has ordained 
that men shall prize most that which shall cost an effort, 
and while it has designed that you shall at some time 
give your heart and hand to a worthy man, it has also 
provided a way for making the prize he seeks an appar- 
ently difficult one to win. It is a simple and beautiful 
provision for enhancing your value in his eyes, so as to 
make a difficult thing of that which you know to be un- 
speakably easy. If you hold yourselves cheaply, and 
meet all advances with open willingness and gladness, 
the natural result will be that your lover will tire of you. 
I introduce this subject here, not because I wish to, but 
because I am compelled to, in order to explain what I 
have to say upon the habit and love of flirting. 

To become a flirt is to metamorphose into a disgust- 
ing passion that which, by natural constitution, is a 
harmless and useful instinct. This instinct of coquetry, 
which makes a woman a thing to be won, and which I 



From Girlhood to Womanhood. 83 

suppose all women are conscious of possessing in some 
degree, is not a thing to be cultivated or developed, at 
all. It should be left to itself, unstimulated and unper- 
verted, and if, in the formative stage of your woman- 
hood, by initiating shallow attachments and heartlessly 
breaking them, or seeking to mike impressions for the 
sake of securing attentions which are repaid by insult 
and negligence, you do violence to your nature, you 
make of yourself a woman whom your own sex despise, 
and whom all sensible men who do not mean to cheat 
you with insincerities as mean as yours, are afraid of. 
They will not love, and they will not trust you. This 
instinct, then, is not a thing to be harmlessly played 
with ; and I know of few more unhappy and disgusting 
sights than a girl bringing into her womanhood this 
passion — harmful alike to herself and others. 

The natural and inevitable influence of the devotion 
of your thoughts — spoken, written, or unexpressed — to 
beaux and the subject of marriage, while your mind is 
undergoing a process of crystallization, is to deter that 
process, to vitiate it, and to make you unworthy in many 
ways. It is all-important to you at this time to have the 
counsel of a good, sensible woman, who shall be your 
senior by at least ten years. She should be a married 
woman, and, by all means, your mother, unless there 
be some natural bar to entire communion between you. 
Do nothing, and give a cherished entertainment to no 
thoughts which you are unwilling to reveal to this wo- 



84 Tit comb's Letters. 

man. If your companions persist in keeping subjects 
of this character before your mind, leave them — cut 
them. 

It is necessary that, while your education is actively 
in progress, your perceptions be kept healthful, and 
your sentiments unperverted by thoughtless tampering 
with a subject which you will some time come to know 
is one of the most serious moment. It spoils a girl to 
get the idea into her head, that marriage is the chief end 
of woman, that education is but a preparation for mat- 
rimony, and that accomplishments are nothing but 
contrivances for catching a husband. And now, young 
woman, whose eye traces these lines, I ask you to de- 
cide how much of this letter belongs to you- How are 
you living ? What is the principal subject of your 
thoughts ? I know that I reveal some young women co 
themselves ; and I only fear that they will find them- 
selves so bound to their seductive thoughts and fancies — ■ 
so dissipated and enervated by them — that they have 
not moral strength enough left to break away from them. 



LETTER III. 

ACQUISITIONS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS. 

Show us how divine a thing 
A woman may be made. 

— Wordsworth. 

IT is a matter of special importance to you that you 
comprehend and thoroughly appreciate the difference 
between accomplishments and scientific and literary 
acquisitions. A woman may have many acquisitions, 
and no accomplishments, in the usual meaning of that 
word, and vice versa. As the life of the woman goes in 
this country, these acquisitions perform their most im- 
portant office in the process by which they are achieved; 
— that is, the great work which they do for a woman is 
that of training and disciplining her mind. Many a 
woman thoroughly learned Algebra at school, with de- 
cided advantage to herself, who never makes a practical 
use of Algebra. She may have been a good Latin or 
Greek scholar, but, having no important use for her 
acquisition in practical, life, she suffers her knowledge 
of those languages to fade out. In short, there are very 



86 TitcomVs Letters. 

few of her text-books which, in five years after leaving 
school, she would not be obliged to review with the 
severest study before she could reacquire the credit she 
won in her last examination. A woman may have a 
pet acquisition which she transforms, by her manner of 
treatment, into an accomplishment. Botany is thus 
transformed, not unfrequently, into a very graceful 
thing. 

An accomplishment differs from a science, or a sys- 
tem of truth of any kind, acquired during the process 
of education, in that it needs to be permanent, and so 
far as possible perfect, to be of any use to the individual 
or to society. Music, drawing, conversation, cornposi' 
tion, the French language, dancing — all these in Amer- 
ica are regarded as accomplishments ; yet of fifty wo- 
men who acquire either of them, or all of them, not 
more than two retain them. 

Miss Georgiana Aurelia Atkins Green was an intimate 
friend of mine, or, rather, perhaps I should say, her 
mother's brother boarded my horse, and I bought my 
meat of her father. It was the determination of Mrs. 
Green that her daughter should be a finished lady. 
During the finishing process I saw but little of her. It 
occupied three years, and was performed at a fashion- 
able boarding-school, between the ages of fifteen and 
eighteen, regardless of expense. When she was finished 
off, she was brought home in triumph, and exhibited on 
various occasions to crowds of admiring friends. I went 



Acquisitions and Accomplishments. 87 

one evening to see her. She was really very pretty, and 
took up her role with spirit, and acted it admirably. I 
saw a portfolio lying upon her piano, and knowing that 
I was expected to seize upon it at once, I did so, against 
Miss Green's protestation, which she was expected to 
make, of course. I found in it various pencil drawings, 
a crayon head of the infant Samuel, and a terrible ship- 
wreck in India ink. The sketches were not without 
merit. These were all looked over, and praised, of 
course. Then came the music. •This was some years 
ago, and the most that I remember is that she played 
O Dolce Concento with the variations, and the Battle of 
Prague, the latter of which the mother explained to me 
during its progress. The pieces were cleverly executed, 
and then I undertook to talk with the young woman. I 
gathered from her conversation that Mrs. Martinet, the 
principal of the school where she had been finished, was 
a lady of " so much style ! " that Miss Kittleton of New 
York was the dearest girl in the school, and that she 
(Georgiana) and the said Kittleton were such friends 
that they always dressed alike ; and that Miss Kittle- 
ton's brother Fred was a magnificent fellow. The last 
was said with a blush, from the embarrassments of which 
she escaped gracefully by stating that the old Kittleton 
was a banker, and rolled in money. 

It was easy to see that the parents of this dear girl 
admired her profoundly* I pitied her and them, and 
determined, as a matter of duty, that I would show her 



88 Tit comb's Letters. 

just how much her accomplishments were worth. 1 
accordingly asked of my wife the favor to invite the 
whole family to tea, in a quiet way. They all came, on 
the appointed evening, and after the tea was over, I ex- 
pressed my delight that there was one young lady in 
our neighborhood who could do something to elevate 
the tone of our society. I then drew out, in a careless 
way, a letter I had just received from a Frenchman, and 
asked of Miss Georgiana the favor to read it to me. She 
took the letter, blushed, went half through the first line 
correctly, then broke down on a simple word, and con- 
fessed that she could not read it. It was a little cruel ; 
but I wished to do her good, and proceeded with my 
experiment. I took up a piece of music, and asked her 
if she had seen it. She had not. I told her there was 
a pleasure in store for both of us. I had heard the song 
once, and I would try to sing it if she would play the 
accompaniment. She declared she could not do it with- 
out practice, but I told her she was too modest by half. 
So I dragged her, protesting, to the piano. She knew 
she would break down. I knew she would, and she 
did. Well, I would not let her rise, for as Mr. and Mrs. 
Green were fond of the old-fashioned church music, 
and had been singers in their day, and in their way, I 
selected an old tune, and called them to the piano to 
assist. Miss Green gave us the key, and we started off 
in fine style. It was a race to see which would come 
out ahead. Georgiana won, by skipping most of the 



Acquisitions and Accomplishments . 89 

notes. She rose from the piano with her cheeks as red 
as a beet. 

"By the way," said I, " Georgiana, your teacher of 
drawing must have been an excellent one." I did not 
tell her that I had seen evidence of- this in her own 
efforts in art, but I touched the right spring, and the 
lady gave me the teacher's credentials, and told me 
what such and such people had said of her. " Well," 
said I, " I am glad if there is one young woman who has 
learned drawing properly. Now you have nothing to 
do but to practise your delightful art, and you must do 
something for the benefit of your friends. I promised a 
sketch of my house to a particular friend, at a distance, 
and you shall come up to-morrow and make one. I re- 
member that beautiful cottage among your sketches ; 
and I should prize a sketch of my own, even half as well 
done, very highly." The poor girl was blushing again, 
and from the troubled countenances of her parents, I 
saw that they had begun indistinctly to comprehend the 
shallowness — the absolute worthlessness — of the accom- 
plishments that had cost them so much. Georgiana ac- 
knowledged that she had never sketched from nature — ■ 
that her teacher had never required it of her, and that 
she had no confidence that she could sketch so simple 
an object as my house. The Greens took an early leave, 
and I regret to say a cool one. They were mortified, 
and there was not good sense enough in the girl to make 
an improvement of the hints I had given her. 



90 TitcomVs Letters. 

The Green family resided upon a street that I always 
took on my way to the post-office, and there was rarely 
a pleasant evening that did not show their parlor alight, 
and company within it. I heard the same old varia- 
tions of O Dolce Concento evening after evening. The 
Battle of Prague was fought over and over again. The 
portfolio of drawings (such of them as had not been 
expensively framed) was exhibited, I doubt not, to ad- 
miring friends until they were soiled with thumbing. 
At last, Georgiana was engaged, and then she was mar- 
ried — married to a very good fellow, too. He loved 
music, loved painting, and loved his wife. Two years 
passed away; and I determined to ascertain how the 
pair got along. She was the mother of a fine boy whom 
I knew she would be glad to have me see. I called, was 
treated cordially, and saw the identical old portfolio, on 
the identical old piano. I asked the favor of a tune. 
The husband with a sigh informed me that Georgiana 
had dropped her music. I looked about the walls, and 
saw the crayon Samuel, and the awful shipwreck in 
India ink. Alas ! the echoes of the Battle of Prague 
that came back over the field of memory, and these 
fading mementoes around me, were all that remained 
of the accomplishments of the late Miss Georgiana 
Aurelia Atkins Green ! 

Now, young woman, I think you will not need any as- 
surance from me that I have drawn a genuine portrait, 
for which any number of your acquaintances may have 



Acquisitions and Accomplishments. 91 

played the original. What do you think of accomplish- 
ments like these ? How much do they amount to ? My 
opinion of them is that they are the shabbiest of all 
things that can be associated with a woman's life and 
history. I have told you this story in order to show you 
the importance of incorporating your accomplishments 
with your very life. It is comparatively an easy task to 
learn a few tunes by rote ; to get up, with the assistance 
of a teacher, a few drawings ; to go through with a few 
French exercises ; but it is not so easy to learn the 
science of music, and go through the manual practice 
necessary to make the science available under all cir- 
cumstances. It is not easy to sketch with facility from 
nature. It is not easy to comprehend the genius of the 
French language, and so to familiarize yourself with it 
that it shall ever remain an open language to you, and 
give you a key to a new literature. A true accomplish- 
ment is won only by hard work ; but when it is won, it 
is a part of you, which nothing but your own neglect can 
take away from you. 

And now let me tell you a secret. Multitudes of 
married men are led to seek the society of other wo- 
men, or go out among their own fellows, and often into 
bad habits, because they have drunk every sweet of 
life which their wives can give them. They have heard 
all their tunes, seen all their efforts at art, sounded 
their minds, and measured every charm, and they see 
that henceforth there is nothing in the society of their 



92 TitcomFs Letters. 

wives but insipidity. They married women of accom- 
plishments, but they see never a new development oi 
any improvement. Their wives can do absolutely noth- 
ing. The shell is broken ; the egg is eaten. 

The first accomplishment that I would urge upon 
you, is .that of using the English language with cor- 
rectness, elegance, and facility. There are, compara- 
tively, few young women who can write a good note. 
I know of hardly one who can punctuate her sentences 
properly. I beg of you never to write affection with 
a single/, or friendship without an i in the first syllable. 
Such slips destroy the words, and the sentiments they 
represent. If you accomplish yourself in nothing else, 
learn thoroughly how to use your mother tongue. I 
remember one young woman with whom, when in 
youth, I had the misfortune to correspond. In the 
barrenness of subjects upon which to engage her pen, 
she once inquired by note whether I ever saw such " a 
spell of wether," as we had been having. I frankly 
informed her that I never did, and that I hoped she 
would never indulge in such another, for it made me 
cool. She took the hint, and broke off the correspon- 
dence. 

There are many who can write tolerably well, but 
who cannot talk. Conversation I am inclined to rank 
among the greatest accomplishments and the greatest 
arts. Natural aptness has much to do with this, but no 
woman can talk well who has not a good stock of defi- 



Acquisitions and Accomplishments. 93 

nite information. I may add to this, that no woman 
talks well and satisfactorily who reads for the simple 
purpose of talking. There must exist a genuine in- 
terest in the affairs which most concern all men and 
women. The book, magazine, and newspaper literature 
of the time, questions of public moment, all matters 
and movements relating to art, affairs of local interest 
— all these a woman may know something of, and 
know something definitely. Of all these she can talk 
if she will try, because there is something in all which 
excites feeling of some kind, and shapes itself into 
opinion. 

But whatever accomplishment a young woman at- 
tempts to acquire, let her by all means acquire it 
thoroughly and keep it bright. Accomplishments all 
occupy the field of the arts. They are things which 
have no significance or value save in the ability of 
doing. They become, or should become, the exponents 
of a woman's highest personality. They are her most 
graceful forms of self-expression, and into them she can 
pour the stream of her thoughts and fancies, and 
through them utter the highest language of her na- 
ture and her culture. Accomplishments make a wo- 
man valuable to herself. They greatly increase her 
pleasure, both directly in the practice, and indirectly 
through the pleasures which she gives to society. A 
truly accomplished woman — one whose thoughts have 
come naturally to flow out in artistic forms, whether 



94 TitcomVs Letters. 

through the instrumentality of her tongue, her pen, her 
pencil, or her piano, is a treasure to herself and to so- 
ciety. Such a woman as this would I have you to be. 
There may be something to interfere with your being 
all this ; but this you can do : you can acquire thor- 
oughly every accomplishment for which you have a 
natural aptitude, or you can let it alone. Do not be 
content with a smattering of anything. Do not be con- 
tent to play parrot to your teachers, until your lesson is 
learned, and then think you are accomplished. Do not 
be content with mediocrity in any accomplishment you 
undertake. Do not be content to be a Miss Georgiana 
Aurelia Atkins Green ! 



LETTER IV. 

UNREASONABLE AND INJURIOUS RESTRAINTS 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. 

— Shakspere. 

1 SUPPOSE that most men have observed the follow- 
ing facts, from which I propose to draw a lesson : — ■ 
First, that young married women have a peculiar charm 
for unmarried young men, and that a young man's first 
love is almost uniformly devoted to a woman older than 
himself. 

A marriageable young woman occupies, or is made to 
occupy, a position of peculiar hardship. Our theory is 
that a woman should never make an advance towards 
the man she loves and would marry. Such a step is 
deemed inconsistent with maiden modesty. I do not 
quarrel with this, but the effect has been to make young 
women, who possess sensitive natures, hypocrites. It. 
ought not to do it, but it does. Every modest young 
woman, possessing a good degree of sagacity, plays a 
part, almost always, when in the society of young men. 



g6 Tit comb's Letters. 

The fear is that by some word, or look, or act, she shall 
express such a degree of interest in a young man as 
shall lead him to believe that she wishes to marry him. 
Young women study the effect of their language, they 
often shun civilities, they put on an artificial and con- 
strained style of behavior, for fear that some complacent 
fool will misconstrue them, or some gentleman whom 
they wish to please will deem them too forward, and so 
become disgusted. The result is, that a man rarely 
finds out either the best or the worst points of his wife's 
character before he marries her. Social intercourse is 
carried on under a kind of protest, which places every 
young woman in a position absolutely false before the 
eyes of young men. Many a woman owes a life of celi- 
bacy and disappointment to the fact that she never felt 
at liberty to act out herself. 

With these statements, it is very easy to understand 
the attractions which a young married woman has for a 
bachelor, and to explain the phenomenon of a young 
man falling in love with a woman older than himself, 
m the first instance, a married woman becomes 
Agreeable because she becomes perfectly natural and 
unconstrained, her circumstances allowing all the more 
grateful forms of politeness — the cordial greeting, the 
complimentary attentions, and the free conversation — 
without the danger of being misconstrued. In the latter 
instance, the woman throws off her constraint in the 
same manner, because she is in the society of one whom 



Unreasonable and Injurious Restraints. 97 

she regards as, in reality, a boy. She finds, very much 
to her surprise, that she has won the boy's heart ; but it 
was the most natural thing in the world. He had never 
had a sight of a woman's nature before. The girls with 
whom he had associated had always worn a mask. The 
real hearts behind it he had thus' far failed to appre- 
hend. There is a very general impression among the 
young men whose affections are not engaged that the 
*best women are married, and that those who are left do 
not amount to much. They will think differently some 
time or other. 

Now my idea is that this universal mask-wearing sys- 
tem should be broken up. It does injustice to all par- 
ties. If there is, in society, any poor creature in the 
form of a man whose vanity is so open to flattery that a 
young woman cannot treat him with natural, cordial 
politeness, without his thinking that she would like to 
marry him, and is trying to ensnare him, let him think 
so, and trust to time and circumstances for justice. 
Such men are of too little account in the world to pay 
for carrying a deceitful face, and despoiling the inter- 
course of the young of its sweetest charms. If you like 
the society of young men, take no pains to conceal it, 
but treat them with frank cordiality. No true gentle 
man among them will misconstrue you. It is not neces' 
sary for you to tell them that you calculate to live a 
maiden life. They know you lie. It will not do to in- 
dicate to any man of sense that you do not like the at- 
5 



98 Tit comb's Letters. 

tentions and society of gentlemen, for he knows better. 
He knows, at least, that you ought to like them, and 
that if you do not, there is something wrong about you. 
Don't practise deception of any kind. A man who is 
frank and open-hearted with you, deserves to be met 
with a frank and open heart by you ; and in ninety-nine 
cases in every hundred, men will be honorable and 
manly with you, if you will lay aside suspicion, and 
trust them. If a man prove himself unworthy of your 
confidence, you have your remedy. Cut him, or tell him 
what you think of him, and bring him upon his knees. 

I have given my advice without many qualifications, 
but do not misconstrue me. I write upon the supposi- 
tion that you have common sense, and know what I 
mean. Some people, I suppose, would present you 
with a formula by which to conduct all your intercourse 
with young men. I know a large number of fathers and 
mothers who will think that, upon this subject, I ought 
to guard my language, and be more particular ; but I 
know very well that if you have not sense and prudence 
enough to take this general counsel, and use it judi- 
ciously, no qualifications that I could make would be of 
any service to you. 

1 trust you. I believe you are virtuous young women, 
with pure hearts and true intentions ; and I know there 
is no danger to you until you cease to be such. You 
have an instinct— God's word in your own souls— that 
tells you when a man takes the first wrong step towards 



Unreasonable and Injurious Restraints. 99 

you ; and if you do not repel that step in such a manner 
that it will never be repeated, do you suppose that any- 
thing I could say to you would do you any good ? I say 
this : that perfect frankness and cordiality in the treat- 
ment of young men are entirely consistent with the 
safety of any true woman from insult or offensive famil- 
iarity. Is your father afraid to trust you out of his sight? 
I am not. If I were, I would be ashamed to confess it, 
particularly if you were a daughter of mine. I believe 
in you, and I believe, moreover, that if this contempt- 
ible idea that men are your natural enemies, and that 
you must cheat them and look out for them, could be 
got out of the way, and a free and unconstrained social 
intercourse established between you and them, they 
would be much better, and you altogether safer for it. 

There is another subject, more or less intimately 
associated with this, which may as well be treated here. 
It is very natural for young women to get in the habit 
of treating only those young men politely whom they 
happen, for various reasons, to fancy. They " don't 
care " what the majority of young men think of them, 
provided they retain the good will of their particular 
pets. They are whimsical, and take on special and 
strong likes or dislikes for the young men whom they 
meet. One is " perfectly hateful," and another is " per- 
fectly splendid," and so they proceed to make fools of 
themselves over both -parties. Now there is nothing 
upon which a young man is so sensitive as this matter 



ioo TitcomVs Letters. 

of being treated with polite consideration by the young 
women of his acquaintance ; and I know of nothing 
which will tend more certainly to make a young man 
hateful than to treat him as if he were so. There is a 
multitude of young men whose self-respect is nurtured, 
whose ambition is quickened, and whose hearts are 
warmed with a genial fire, by those considerate recog- 
nitions on the part of their female acquaintances which 
assure them that they have a position in the esteem of 
those with whom they associate the sweetest hopes and 
happiness of life. To be cut for no good cause is to re- 
ceive a wound which is not easily healed. 

The duty, therefore, which I would inculcate is that 
of systematic politeness. If you know a young man, 
bow to him when you meet him. He will not bow to 
you first, for he waits for your recognition. He does 
not know whether you esteem him of sufficient value to 
be recognised. If you pass him without a recognition, 
you say to him, in a language which he feels with a 
keenness which you cannot measure, that you consider 
him beneath your notice. You plant in his heart imme- 
diately a prejudice against yourself. You disturb him. 
You hurt him, and this, too, let me admit, very fre- 
quently without design. You are sensitive yourself, and 
are afraid he has forgotten you. You think, perhaps, 
that he would not like to notice you, and would not like 
to have you notice him. There is a good deal of this 
kind of thing, doubtless, but it is all wrong. There is 



Unreasonable and Injurious Restraints. 101 

no man who will not return your bow, and feel the bet- 
ter for your smile ; and if the young man receiving the 
attention is poor, and has his position in the world to 
win, and feels that he has not as many attractions, per- 
sonal or circumstantial, as others, you have made his 
heart light, and awakened towards yourself a feeling of 
cordial good will, akin in many instances to gratitude. 

A young woman who is afraid of compromising her 
position by recognising men out of her set, or out of a 
certain line of genteel occupations, shows by how frail a 
tenure she holds her own respectability. I could name 
to you women who have not only a recognised but a 
commanding position in the best society, who are as 
uniformly and systematically polite to the clerk who 
sells them silks, as to the pets of their circle ; who have 
a bow and a smile for all with whom they have ever 
been thrown into personal relations, and who, by this 
very politeness, more than by any other self-expression, 
vindicate their place among those whom society calls 
ladies. There is a kind word for them in every young 
man's mouth : and no young man would ever think of 
presuming upon such politeness for the indulgence of 
an offensive familiarity. Such women have a sacredness 
in his eyes that no other women possess, and he would 
offend them in no way, for the world. 

The advice I have given you in these matters is partly 
for the benefit of your sex, and partly for mine. I be- 
lieve that there should be a far more rational mode of 



102 Titcomb's Letters. 

intercourse between young men and young women than 
at present exists. I believe that every legitimate attrac- 
tion that your society has for young men should be free 
and unconstrained. I believe that there is no good 
reason why a young married woman should be more 
attractive to a bachelor than yourselves, and that in the 
degree in which they are more attractive, do you wrong 
yourselves and the young men of your acquaintance. I 
believe that it is well for you, and well for young men, 
that they should be attracted to you by a frank behavior 
on your part, which will place them at their ease, and 
exercise upon them all that good influence which a pure, 
strong, outspoken female nature is so well calculated to 
exert. 

Young men and young women, to use a cant phrase 
of the day, are " in the same boat." But a few years 
will pass away before they will be the bosom compan- 
ions of each other, and the fathers and mothers of the 
land. It matters everything to them that they under- 
stand each other ; and to this end, in my judgment, an 
intercourse between them should be established upon a 
very different basis from that which is now maintained 
by society. It should be more simple, more ample, 
more natural, more trustful, and more heartily consid- 
erate. There is nothing in the history of the race to 
prove that anything has ever been preserved or won to 
virtue by a system of essential falsehood, or a policy of 
arbitrary constraint. Many a girl feels this, and will 



Unreasonable and Injurious Restraints. 103 

feel it to her dying day. To tie a young woman up to 
the meanly cautious conventionalisms of the day, is to 
prepare her as a helpless sacrifice to the first design- 
ing villain who insinuates himself into her confidence. 
Many a woman groans to-day in bondage to a drunk- 
ard, a libertine, or a dolt, who only needed to have been 
allowed to know men better to nave secured a proper 
companion. 

I say, then, to you, young women, reform this thing 
altogether. It is in your hands. I give you the idea : 
I leave you to carry it into practice. You do not need 
that I should tell you how to do it. If you are not 
vicious, there is nothing for you, in your mind and 
heart, to conceal. Be simply yourselves, taking all 
possible care to make yourselves what you should be. 
Learn to think kindly of all young men, save those 
who, you have reason to believe, possess black hearts 
and foul intentions — those who are enemies of your sex 
and social purity. Treat every young man well, both 
for his sake and your own. You shall thus be the light 
of many eyes, and your kind heart, thorough good man- 
ners, and transparent nature, cannot fail to attract to 
you those whose true nobility is the most strongly 
touched by that which is best in womanhood. One of 
those will become your companion, I am inclined to 
think, if human nature, meanwhile, do not suffer some 
remarkable change. 



LETTER V. 

THE CLAIMS OF LOVE AND LUCRE. 

Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare, 

And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair. 

— Byron. 

YOU calculate when you are married to be married 
to the man you love, and no other ; yet there are 
a good many chances that you will be influenced in 
your choice by other considerations. But you should 
never think of marrying a man simply because you love 
him. You may love a man who has personal habits 
that will make you miserable. You may love a man so 
lazy or so inefficient that your whole life will be neces- 
sarily a continued struggle with poverty. You may love 
a man who has no adaptation to you — who is surly and 
stupid and unresponsive : who can give no satisfactory 
return of your affection, and who will repulse every 
demonstration of your fondness. You may love a man 
who is supremely selfish. When you become bound 
for life to a man, he should be one who can make you 
happier than you would be alone. There are doubtless 



The Claims of Love and Lucre. 105 

some instances of a love so noble and so self-sacrificing 
that it will welcome poverty and want, with the object 
of its desire, as being far better than riches without 
it. I will not quarrel with this. I only say that, gen- 
erally, competence (I do not mean wealth) is necessary 
to that degree of comfort without which love fails of its 
sweetest exercises and most grateful rewards. Love for 
a man is only one reason why you should marry him. 
There may be a round dozen of reasons why you should 
not. 

A woman's heart is a very queer thing, on the whole. 
It falls in love in the most unaccountable way, with the 
most unaccountable men. It is a hard thing to reason 
with, and a much harder thing to reason about, yet 
there are some things which may be said to those whose 
judgment is not yet blinded by a passion that contemns 
reason. You should marry a man to whom you will 
be willing to bend, or one whom you know you can 
manage without his knowledge, or with his consent. 
The instances are very rare in which two strong wills 
can harmonize in close companionship. They must 
both be governed by principle, and be mutually forbear- 
ing from principle. I have seen noble instances of this, 
but not often. The law of nature is that the wife shall 
bend to the husband — that her will shall, at last, be sub- 
ject ; yet there are instances of true affection between 
man and woman in which subjection on the part of 
the man becomes the law of nature, the woman's judg- 
5* 



io6 TitcomVs Letters. 

ment being the best, and her will the strongest. In 
these cases, the female mind possesses masculine char- 
acteristics and the male mind feminine characteristics ; 
and it is just as proper that her mind should govern in 
these instances as that the male mind should govern in 
others. But there is something unnatural in this, after 
all — or something, I should say, out of the common 
order of things. 

If a woman sincerely believe that there is no man to 
whose will she can gladly subordinate her own, let her 
seek out a feminine man, and make suit for his hand. 
A noted female vocalist, whom all of us love, had the 
credit of doing this. He gave up even his religion for 
her, though that may not have cost him much. I pre- 
sume that she governs him, and I have yet to learn that 
the union is not thoroughly a happy one. After all, if 
the lady were a graceful subject of a kingly intellect, I 
cannot help thinking that she would be in a more nat- 
ural position, and one in which she would be happier 
than she is now. 

You are placed in a position of peculiar temptation. 
You have ambitions to be something more than pretty, 
accomplished, and loved — at least, some of you have. 
You want a career. As a woman, you see that you can- 
not have one, save through a matrimonial connection. 
You wish to do something — to be something — to be mis- 
tress of an establishment, or to be associated with one 
who has the public eye, or the public consideration. It 



The Claims of Love and Lucre. 107 

is thus that wealth and position come to you with very 
great temptations. A man of wealth or a man of power 
offers you his hand, and, unless he is absolutely repul- 
sive, he will generally get it. You will try to love him, 
or learn to love him, or think you love him ; or perhaps 
you will take a mercenary or a worldly view of the whole 
matter, and marry him for what of wealth and position he 
can bring you. Now all this marrying for money, or 
for position, or for any other consideration, when genu- 
ine love is absent, is essential prostitution. I know of 
no difference between selling one's self for a lifetime, 
and that sale of the soul and body which is made in the 
house of her whose steps take hold on hell. If you find 
yourself willing to give up yourself to a man in a life- 
long connection for the house he gives you, for the silks 
and furs with which he clothes you, for the society into 
which he introduces you, for the position with which he 
endows you, then, whether you know it or not, you be- 
come the sister of the drab whom you so inconsistently 
spurn from your side. In fact, the motives that have 
made her what she is may be white by the side of yours. 
Marrying for love may seem to be a very silly thing to 
a woman of the world ; but marrying without love, for 
a consideration, is wicked. " Love in a cottage " is 
laughed at by very " judicious people," but it is a very 
sweet thing by the side of indifference in a palace. I 
know of nothing more disgusting in all the world than 
that mercenary tie which, under the name of marriage, 



108 Tit comb's Letters. 

binds a woman to the bosom of one who bought he* 
with his money. 

I know what the world says about this matter, and 1 
very heartily despise the world for it. When I ask the 
world if Jane has " made out well" by her union, and 
am told that she has done finely, and married a man 
worth a hundred thousand dollars, I am tempted to be 
profane. When I ask the world how Kate has settled, 
and am informed, as the essential portion of the reply 
that her husband is "an excellent provider," I am 
tempted to spit in its face. The conventional idea of a 
happy and proper matrimonial connection is so mean 
and so arbitrary, that it is no wonder that unsophisti- 
cated girls sacrifice themselves. I pity them from the 
bottom of my heart. They cannot have even the repu- 
tation of marrying well unless they allow base motives 
to enter into their calculations. They learn early to aim 
at wealth or position as primary and supremely desira- 
ble things. A brilliant match, in the eyes of the world, 
atones for low morals, uncongenial tastes, and lukewarm 
hearts. 

Now, if you must make calculations, let me help you. 
Make genuine affection the first thing. This is abso- 
lutely indispensable. It takes precedence of everything 
else. You are not at liberty to consider anything before 
this. A union based upon anything else, is, as I have 
already told you, essential prostitution. It is against 
nature — against God's most wise and benevolent inten- 



The Claims of Love and Lucre. 109 

tions. You can make no union with a man, not based 
on this, that will give you happiness. Friendship alone 
will not do. Esteem alone will not do. The idea of giv- 
ing yourself to a man simply because you esteem him, 
and respect him, is disgusting. The union of the current 
of your life with that of a man is the great event of your 
history, and if this be not through those natural affini- 
ties, sympathies, and partialities — that passion of your 
soul which heaven intended should be called into exer- 
cise by manhood — then it is only a conventional union, 
and no union in fact. Love, then, I say, is the essential 
thing, and yet love, as I have said before, is only one 
thing. There may be in the man who excites the holiest 
and strongest passion of your nature many things 
which, if you value peace — if you value your own puri- 
ty, even — should lead you to pluck that passion from 
your breast, and turn your back upon its object, that 
God's light may rest upon your brow, even if sorrow 
make darkness in your heart. 

It is hard to examine character, and profit by the 
study, after the heart has become the seat of an absorb- 
ing passion ; but it is indispensably necessary to do it 
sometimes. It is far better that the passion be excited 
by the influence of character, disposition, and bearing, 
but when study becomes necessary, it should be entered 
upon conscientiously ; for the second requisite for a 
happy union is sound character. A woman possessing 
the best elements of womanhood cannot be happy with 



no TitcomVs Letters. 

a man who has not a sound character. He may have a 
good disposition, he may be intelligent, he may have 
wealth and honor, but if his character be weak or faulty, 
she has no reliance ; and she must ultimately lose her 
respect for him. When respect is gone, she may love, 
she may pity, she may forgive, but she cannot be 
happy. Disposition comes in for consideration in the 
third place, and worldly circumstances in the fourth, or 
perhaps still lower in the scale. I might speak of an- 
other thing, requisite to happiness in the highest degree, 
but I will not, now and here. 

In the consideration of worldly circumstances, be 
wise. Remember that if your lover be intelligent, 
healthy, the master of a business or a profession, he 
stands many more chances to die in the possession of 
wealth or competence than he would if rich now, and 
without a settled business and settled purposes. I have 
watched the results of many matches, and I have seen 
ten which started with a fortune to be acquired, turn out 
well in a worldly point of view, where I have seen one 
result happily, starting with the fortune made. If a 
young man is honorable, intelligent, industrious, and 
manly in every respect, and you love him, marry him. 
There is no power under heaven that has a moral right 
to stand between you and your happiness. Many a 
poor girl who married for money now pines in poverty, 
and covets the position of girls whose wiser choice she 
once contemned. 



The Claims of Love and Lucre. 1 1 1 

I speak in this way for two reasons. The first is, that 
it is not only your right but your duty to consider 
whether a life of certain poverty will be compensated by 
a life of association with the man you love. The second 
is, that when you take this matter into consideration 
you should make your judgment upon a sound basis. 
Wealth in hand, without business habits, business 
tastes, and business interests, is the most unreliable 
thing in the world. It may even spoil a good lover and 
in time transform him into a loafer or a sot. On the 
contrary, good business habits, good character, enter- 
prise, ambition — all these combined — are almost sure to 
secure competence and success. If you would rely on 
anything, rely on these, for they are the only reliable 
things. Misfortune may deal harshly with these, but 
that is the business of Providence. 

I fancy one reply that may be made to all this wise 
talk. Women practically have comparatively little 
choice in the matter. They grow up from the cradle 
with the idea that it is a horrible thing to live and die 
an old maid. That, in the minds of half the girls, is the 
most terrible thing in all the world. They can abide 
anything better than that. So they feel a kind of obli- 
gation to jump at the first offer, they are so much afraid 
they shall never have another. Let them remember 
that a mismated match is much worse than an unmated 
life. I believe that marriage is the true condition, and 
that no man or woman can fully enjoy life unmarried ; 



112 TitcomUs Lettci's. 

but I know they will be more unhappy if they are badly 
matched than if not matched at all. But women have 
more choice than they think, and would have still more 
than they do, if their intercourse with young men were 
placed upon the basis indicated in my last letter. 

Most young women study the character of men but 
little, because they have but little opportunity. They 
see comparatively few, and, through the character of 
their intercourse, know them very incompletely. It is 
a sin and a shame that young women enjoy such inferior 
opportunities of learning the character of young men, — 
of weighing, comparing^ and judging them. It is a 
shame that they have no more opportunities for a choice. 
My own wife very fortunately got an excellent husband, 
but it is something for which she is to be grateful to an 
overruling Providence, for her own knowledge had very 
little to do with it. I could have cheated her beyond all 
account. I tell you, men want studying for some years, 
before you find them out, and it becomes you to run 
fewer risks than the most of your sex run in this busi- 
ness. It is a good deal of a step— this getting married — 
and I am very anxious that you shall know a great many 
men, that you shall get the one you love, that he shall 
be worthy of you, and that you shall be happy all the 
days of your life. 



LETTER VI. 

THE PRUDENT AND PROPER USE OF LANGUAGE. 

Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, 
Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest. 

— Samuel Johnson. 

And lovelier things have mercy shown 
To every failing but their own, 
And every woe a tear can claim 
Except an erring sister's shame. 

— Byron. 

1HAVE met with a good many young women, first 
and last, whose intellects were of that keen, quick 
variety which delights in uttering sharp things — often 
very hard things. They do it, at first, playfully ; they 
produce a laugh which flatters them ; and they soon 
get to doing it wantonly. They acquire an appetite for 
praise, and they become willing to procure it at what- 
ever expense to others. Genuine wit in a man is almost 
always genial ; wit in a woman, however genial ifmay 
be at first, almost always gets into personalities sooner 
or later, which makes it very dangerous and very hate- 
ful. Man is held in' restraint, whatever his tendencies 



114 Tit comb's Letters. 

may be, by the consideration that, as a man, he will be 
held responsible for his words ; women presume upon 
the fact that they are women, in taking license to say 
what they choose of each other, and of men in particu- 
lar. There is not always — perhaps there is not gener- 
ally — malice in these sharp and hard speeches, but they 
poison, nevertheless. They poison her who utters them, 
and they poison those who suffer from them. The ut- 
terer becomes the student, for a purpose, of the weak 
points of her friends, and they learn to hate her. I 
have known not a few women whose personal witticisms 
were enjoyed by the gossip-loving crowd around her, 
every man of whom would as soon think of marrying a 
tigress as the one he was flattering by the applause of 
his laugh. 

Therefore I say that to be a witty woman is a very 
dangerous thing. To be a witty woman is to be the 
subject of very great temptations, for personalities form 
the very zest of gossip — an employment of which most 
women, I think, know something by experiment. Men 
are afraid of witty women, especially those who delight 
in making cutting speeches. They say, very rationally, 
that if a woman will secure praise at the expense of one 
friend, she will also at the expense of others, and that 
no one can be safe. There is nothing in my eyes more 
admirable in a woman than an honest wish to hear no 
one spoken against — than that consideration for the 
feelings of others which leads her to treat all faults with 



The Proper Use of Language. 115 

tenderness, and all weaknesses and natural unpleasant 
peculiarities with indulgence. One of the most attrac- 
tive sights in the world, to any young man of common 
sensibility, is that of a young woman who not only will 
neither say nor hear ill of any one, but who takes spe- 
cial pains to notice those whom the crowd neglect. 
Such a woman is the admired of all whose admiration is 
worth securing. And now, young woman, if you are one 
of the sharp ones, and are tempted to say sharp things, 
remember that you are in very great danger of injuring 
yourself, not only in your own soul, but in the eyes of 
all those whom you imagine you are pleasing. 

I think, as a general thing, that women are harder in 
their judgments of their own sex than men are of theirs, 
or even of them. This arises partly from jealousy — a 
wish to stand among the uppermost in the popular 
esteem. The praise of women, poured into the ears of 
other women, is not usually gratefully received. The 
disposition of women to judge harshly of each other is 
seen particularly in those instances in which a woman 
has taken a false step. Here the fact is patent ; — a 
woman, forgets, or forgives, much less promptly than a 
man. However deep the repentance, however decided 
the reformation, a woman never forgets that her sister 
has sinned, notwithstanding the fact that weakness and 
misfortune and a hundred mitigating if not exculpating 
circumstances plead in her behalf. It is the same with 
less important lapses of behavior, in a corresponding 



n6 Titcomb's Letters. 

degree. I do not know but this is one of the safeguards 
which God intended should be around a woman's path, 
but it seems to me a very unwomanly and a very un- 
christian thing. It seems to me, too, to be a very un- 
natural thing. I judge that, much more than a man a 
woman should be interested in securing justice for her 
own sex ; and that if a sinning or a silly woman should 
find a charitable defender anywhere, it should be among 
those who, like her, are exposed to the temptations, and 
particularly to the uncharitable misconstructions of a 
captious world. 

What I would insist upon, is, that you not only do not 
wound the feelings of your own sex by sharp criticisms, 
but that you be heartily enlisted in maintaining its 
honor. Do not think that you do this while putting 
down this one and that, in order to make your own im- 
maculateness the more conspicuous. Believe what is 
generally true, that those who sin are those who sin 
rather through weakness than vicious tendency ; that 
villains who wear cravats and waistcoats — the very men 
whom you are by no means particular enough to exclude 
from your company — are those who most deserve your 
reproaches. 

And now that I am upon this subject of talk, it will 
be well to say all I have to say upon it. It is a very 
common thing for young women to indulge in hyperbole. 
A pretty dress is very apt to be "perfectly splendid ; " a 
disagreeable person is too often " perfectly hateful ;" a 



The Proper Use of Language. 1 1 7 

party in which the company enjoyed themselves, some- 
how becomes transmuted into the "most delightful 
thing ever seen." A young man of respectable parts 
and manly bearing is very often " such a magnificent 
fellow !" The adjective " perfect," that stands so much 
alone as never to have the privilege of help from com- 
paratives and superlatives, is sadly overworked, in com- 
pany with several others of the intense and extravagant 
order. The result is that, by the use of such language 
as this, your opinion soon becomes valueless. 

A woman who deals only in superlatives demonstrates 
at once the fact that her judgment is subordinate to her 
feelings, and that her opinions are entirely unreliable. 
All language thus loses its power and significance. The 
same words are brought into use to describe a ribbon in 
a milliner's window, as are employed in the endeavor to 
do justice to Thalberg's execution of Beethoven's most 
heavenly symphony. The use of hyperbole is so com- 
mon among women that a woman's criticism is generally 
without value. Let me insist upon this thing. Be more 
economical in the use of your mother tongue. Apply 
your terms of praise with precision; use epithets with 
some degree of judgment and fitness. Do not waste 
your best and highest words upon inferior objects, and 
find that when you have met with something which 
really is superlatively great and good, the terms by 
which you would distinguish it have all been thrown 
away upon inferior things — that you are bankrupt in ex- 



n8 Tit comb's Letters. 

pression. If a thing is simply good, say so ; if pretty,. 
say so ; if very pretty, say so ; if fine, say so ; if very 
fine, say so ; if grand, say so ; if sublime, say so ; if 
magnificent, say so; if splendid, say so. These words 
all have different meanings, and you may say them all 
of as many different objects, and not use the word " per 
feet " once. That is a very large word. You will prob- 
ably be obliged to save it for application to the Deity, or 
to his works, or to that serene rest which remains for 
those who love him. 

Young women are very apt to imbibe another bad 
habit, namely, the use of slang. I was walking along 
the street the other day when I met an elegantly dressed 
lady and gentleman upon the sidewalk. My attention 
was the more attracted to them because they were evi- 
dently strangers. At any rate they impressed me as 
being very thoroughly refined and genteel people. As I 
came within hearing of their voices — they were quietly 
chatting along the way — I heard these words from the 
woman's lips : " You may bet your life on that." I was 
disgusted. I could almost have boxed her ears. I re- 
member once being in the company of a belle — one who 
had had a winter's reign in Washington. Some kind of 
game was in progress, when, in a moment of surprise, 
she exclaimed, " My Gracious ! " Now you may regard 
this as a finical notion, but I tell you that woman fell as 
flatly in my esteem as if she had uttered an oath. A 
lady, fresh from Paris, once informed me that it would 



The Proper Use of Language. 119 

do the residents of a certain quiet village a great deal 
of good to be " stirred up with a long pole." 

I would by no means insinuate that all young women 
use slang as coarse as this, but I acknowledge to have 
heard phrases as coarse as these from friends whom I 
really esteem. Is not the use of these phrases, and of 
phrases like them whose number is legion, a very vulgar 
habit ? It seems so to me, and I can hear them from 
the lips of no pretty woman except with pain, and a cer- 
tain degree of diminution of my respect for her. The 
habit certainly detracts from womanly dignity. It can 
be dropped without the slightest danger of going into 
that extreme of precision in the use of language, which 
takes out all the life and freedom from social inter- 
course. Slang is bad enough in young men, and they 
indulge in far too much of it ; but in a young woman, it 
is disgusting. It is not the outgrowth of fine natures ; 
it is not accordant with refined taste. Any young 
woman who indulges in it does it at a very sad expense 
to her mind, and manners, and reputation. Therefore, 
beware of it ; discard it ; guard the door of your lips, 
and leave it to those coarse specimens of your sex of 
whose natures and habits of thought it is the natural 
and fitting expression. 

One more bad habit of your tongues, and I conclude. 
It is very common for young women to imagine that all 
tradesmen have a desire to cheat them. They will talk 
to the provision dealers and peddlers who call at their 



120 TitcomVs Letters. 

doors, and to tradesmen in their shops, with a harshness 
that would not be forgiven in a man. Men become 
hardened to this kind of thing, and expect it ; and very 
naturally choose those who suspect them, and accuse 
them of cheating — who chaffer, and cheapen, and find 
fault — for the victims of their sharpest operations. A 
young woman who treats every man with whom she 
trades as a gentleman, giving him her confidence, and 
throwing herself upon his honor and generosity, will 
stand the best possible chance to be fairly dealt by. I 
except Jews with China ware, and men of Celtic origin 
with short pipes in their mouths. It is always safe to 
close a bargain with such persons before entering into 
any operations ; but even this may be done without loss 
of self-respect. If you see that a man designs to cheat 
you, it is not lady-like to put yourself upon a footing 
with him, and undertake to extort a bargain from him. 
Dismiss him without a word. You cannot afford to 
waste any breath or self-respect upon him. 

Because a man has a thing to sell — becaus- ne stands 
behind a counter, or drives a cart, he is not necessarily 
no gentleman. As a general thing, those men deserve 
just as considerate politeness at your hands as if they 
were in your parlor. You have no right to banter them. 
You have no right to suspect them — to say harsh things 
to them — to depreciate their wares, and to place them 
practically in the position of sharpers and knaves. It is 
not lady-like for you to put their politeness to the test. 



The Proper Use of Language. 12 1 

They will not insult you, and in that very fact vindicate 
their claim to your good opinion and polite treatment. 
You may get the credit with them of being sharp, hard 
customers, but they will dislike you, and if they speak 
of you, will not say anything to natter you, 
6 



LETTER VII. 

HOUSEWIFERY AND INDUSTRY. 

She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. . . 
She is not afraid of the snow for her household ; for all her household 
are clothed with scarlet. . . . Strength and honor are her clothing, 
and she shall rejoice in time to come. 

— Solomon. 

AMONG the more homely but most essential accom- 
plishments of a young woman is that of house- 
wifery. There are many things at the present day to 
interfere with its acquisition, but the fact that it is essen- 
tial should lead you to subordinate to it those which are 
not. We hear a great deal about the laziness of the pre- 
sent generation of girls. I think the accusation is un- 
just. Girls who acquire a really good education now, 
accomplish much more genuine hard work than those in 
"the good old times" who only learned to read and 
write, and occupied the most of their time in the kitchen 
and dairy. Nothing that can be called education and 
accomplishment can be achieved without great labor ; 
and, in my opinion, the principal reason why good 
housewifery is so much neglected, as an accomplish- 



Housewifery and Industry. 123 

ment, is, that the time is so much occupied in study. 
Laziness is very apt to come with wealth, and there are 
undoubtedly a great many more lazy girls now than fifty 
years ago. They are certainly a very undesirable arti- 
cle to have about, and I pity the poor fellow who gets 
one of them for a companion ; but I say candidly that 
I do not think there are any more naturally lazy girls in 
the world than usual. 

You expect, one of these days, to be the mistress of 
a house. Your comfort and happiness, and the comfort 
and happiness of your husband, will depend very much 
upon your ability to order that house well. If your 
companion be in humble circumstances, you will very 
likely be obliged to do the most of your work yourself. 
In this case, a thorough knowledge of, and taste for, 
housewifery, will be very necessary to you. If you 
marry a man of competence or wealth, a knowledge of 
good housewifery is quite as essential to you as if you 
were required to do your own work. The expenses of 
your house will be large or small, as you are a bad or a 
good housekeeper. If you do not know how to do the 
work of the house ; if you have no practical knowledge 
of all the offices and economies of an establishment, you 
will be dependent. So far from being the mistress of 
your house, you will be only its guest. Your servants 
will circumvent you, they will cheat you, they will 
make you miserable. If they do not perform their work 
properly, through wilfulness or ignorance, you cannot 



124 Titcomb's Letters. 

tell them how to do better. You will scold them foi 
things which you cannot tell them how to mend, you 
will be unjust, and you will not keep them. Many a 
really good servant is constantly suffering from griev- 
ances growing directly from the ignorance of her mis- 
tress. Unless you are willing to take up for life with a 
boarding-house — a place for people to vegetate in — you 
must be a good housewife. It matters not whether you 
"are rich or poor. You need a practical knowledge of 
cookery, of the laundry, of the prices and qualities of 
provisions, of chamber work — of everything that enters 
into the details of home life. 

Of course, if you have no mother who is capable of 
teaching you these things, you are in a measure excusa- 
ble for not learning them. I pity a family of girls 
whose mother is a know-nothing and a do-nothing. I 
do not blame girls for not wishing to put themselves 
under the tuition of the cook and the maid-of-all-work. 
But even when you find yourselves under disadvantages 
like these, you cannot afford to become a woman with- 
out knowing something of the homely utilities of life. 
Your own aptness of mind — your own good sense and 
ready ingenuity — will give you a clue to the mysteries 
which practice will ultimately make plain. Your com- 
fort, your independence, your reputation, your hus- 
band's respect for you, depend so much upon your 
ability to keep house well, that I cannot leave the sub- 
ject without insisting upon the importance of your 



Housewifery and Industry. 125 

learning to do it while you have the chance. There are 
few higher compliments that can be paid to a young 
woman than that which accords to her the character of 
an excellent housekeeper. There is no reputation which 
will more thoroughly tend to confirm a young woman in 
the esteem of young men, or more forcibly commend 
her to their esteem than that of being acquainted, prac- 
tically, with the details of the kitchen and the economies 
of housekeeping. 

This naturally introduces me to a discussion of the 
benefits of physical industry, and the assumption of 
regular household duties. There is no better relief to 
study than the regular performance of special duties 
in the house. To feel that one is really doing something 
every day, that the house is the tidier for one's efforts, 
and the comfort of the family enhanced, is the surest 
warrant of content and cheerfulness. There is some- 
thing about this habit of daily work — this regular per- 
formance of duty — which tends to regulate the passions, 
to give calmness and vigor to the mind, to impart a 
healthy tone to the body, and to diminish the desire for 
life in the street and for resort to gossiping companions. 

Were I as rich as Croesus, my girls should have some- 
thing to do regularly, just as soon as they should be- 
come old enough to do anything. They should learn, 
above all things, to help themselves, and thus to be in^ 
dependent in all circumstances. A woman, helpless 
from any other cause than sickness, is essentially a 



126 TitcomVs Letters. 

nuisance. There is nothing womanly and ladylike in 
helplessness. My policy would be, as girls grow up, to 
assign to them special duties, first in one part of the 
house, then in another, until they should become ac- 
quainted with all housewifely offices ; and I should have 
an object in this beyond the simple acquisition of a 
knowledge of housewifery. It should be for the acquisi- 
tion of habits of physical industry — of habits that con- 
duce to the health of body and mind — of habits that 
give them an insight into the nature of labor, and in- 
spire within them a genuine sympathy with those whose 
lot it is to labor. 

All young mind is uneasy if it be good for anything. 
There is not the genuine human stuff in a girl who is 
habitually and by nature passive, placid, and inactive. 
The body and the mind must both be in motion. If 
this tendency to activity be left to run loose — undirected 
into channels of usefulness — a spoiled child is the re- 
sult. A girl growing up to womanhood, is, when unem- 
ployed, habitually uneasy. The mind aches and chafes 
because it wants action, for a motive. Now a mind in 
this condition is not benefited by the command to stay at 
home, or the withdrawal from companions. It must be 
set to work. This vital energy that is struggling to find 
relief in demonstration should be so directed that habits 
may be formed, — habits of industry that obviate the 
wish for change and unnecessary play, and form a reg- 
ular drain upon it. Otherwise, the mind becomes dis' 



Housewifery and Industry. 127 

sipated, the will irresolute, and confinement irksome. 
Girls will never be happy, except in the company of 
their playmates, unless home becomes to them a scene 
of regular duty and personal usefulness. 

There is another obvious advantage to be derived 
from the habit of engaging daily upon special household 
duties. The imagination of girls is apt to become ac- 
tive to an unhealthy degree, when no corrective is em- 
ployed. False views of life are engendered, and labor 
is regarded as menial. Ease comes to be looked upon 
as a supremely desirable thing, so that when the real, 
inevitable cares of life come, there is no preparation for 
them, and weak complainings or ill-natured discontent 
are the result. 

And here I am naturally introduced to another sub- 
ject. Young women, the glory of your life is to do 
something and to be something. You very possibly 
may have formed the idea that ease and personal enjoy- 
ment are the ends of your life. This is a terrible mis- 
take. Development in the broadest sense and in the 
highest direction is the end of your life. You may 
possibly find ease with it, and a great deal of precious 
personal enjoyment, or your life may be one long ex- 
perience of self-denial. If you wish to be something 
more than the pet and plaything of a man ; if you 
would rise above the position of a pretty toy, or the 
ornamental fixture of an establishment, you have a 
work to do. You have a position to maintain in so- 



128 Titcomb's Letters. 

ciety ; you have the poor and the sick to visit ; you may 
possibly have a family to rear and train ; you must take 
a load of care upon your shoulders and bear it through 
life. You have a character to sustain ; and I hope that 
you will have the heart of a husband to cheer and 
strengthen. Ease is not for you. Selfish enjoyment is 
not for you. The world is to be made better by you. 
You will be obliged to suffer and to work ; and if there 
be a spark of the true fire in you, your hearts will re- 
spond to these words. 

The time will come when you shall see that all your 
toil, and care, and pain, and sorrow, and practical sym- 
pathy for others has built you up into a strength of 
womanhood which will despise ease as an end of life, 
and pity those who are content with it. Get this idea 
that your great business is simply to live at ease out of 
your head at once. There is nothing noble and ennob- 
ling in it. Your mental and physical powers can only 
give you worthy happiness in the using. They were 
made for use ; and a lazy woman is inevitably miserable. 
I do not put this matter of enjoyment before you as the 
motive for action. I simply state the fact that it is a 
result of action — an incident of a life worthily spent. 

When you have properly comprehended and received 
this idea, the recreations of life and the pleasures of 
social intercourse will take their appropriate positions 
with relation to the business of life — its staple duties. 
Recreation will become re-creation— simply the renewal 



Housewifery and Industry. 129 

of your powers, that they may all the better perform 
the work which you have undertaken, or which circum- 
stances have devolved upon you. Social pleasure will 
rise into a sympathetic communion with natures and 
lives earnest like your own, upon the subjects nearest 
your hearts, and it will give you strength and guidance. 
The pleasures of life will become the wells, scattered 
along the way, where you will lay down your burdens for 
the moment, wipe your brows, and drink, that you may 
go into the work before you refreshed in body and mind. 
In these quiet hours you will feel a healthy thrill of 
happiness which those who seek pleasure for its own 
sake never know. 

There are few objects in this world more repulsive to 
me than a selfish woman— a woman who selfishly con- 
sults her own enjoyments, her own ease, her own plea- 
sure. If you have the slightest desire to be loved ; if 
you would have your presence a welcome one in palace 
and cottage alike ; if you would be admired, respected, 
revered ; if you would have all sweet human sympathies 
clustering around you while you live, and the tears of a 
multitude of friends shed upon your grave when you die, 
you must be a working woman —living and working for 
others, denying yourself for others, and building up for 
yourself a character, strong, symmetrical, beautiful. 
If I were you, I would rather be that insensate and 
quietly gliding shadow which the wounded soldier kissed 

as the noble Florence Nightingale passed his weary pil- 
6* 



130 TitcomUs Letters. 

low, than the pampered creature of luxury, who has np 
thought above her personal ease and personal adorn- 
ment. 

Do not seek out for yourselves any prominent field of 
service where you will attract the attention of the world. 
Remain where God places you. Some of the noblest 
heroisms of the world have been achieved in humble 
life. The poor ye have always with you. The miser- 
able are always around you. You can lighten your 
father's burdens. You can restrain your brothers from 
vicious society. You can relieve your failing and fading 
mother of much care. You can gather the ragged and 
ignorant children at your knee, and teach them some- 
thing of a better life than they have seen. You can be- 
come angels of life and goodness to many stricken 
hearts. You can read to the aged. You can do many 
things which will be changed to blessings upon your own 
soul. Florence Nightingale did her work in her place ; 
do your work in yours, and your Father who seeth in 
secret shall reward you openly. 

I would be the last one to cast a shadow on your 
brows, but I would undeceive you at the first, so that 
you may begin life with right ideas. Life is real — it is 
a real and earnest thing. It has homely details, painful 
passages, and a crown of care for every brow. I seek to 
inspire you with a wish and a will to meet it with a 
woman's spirit. I seek to point you to its nobler mean- 
ings and its higher results. The tinsel with which your 



Housewifery and Industry. 131 

imagination has invested it will all fall off of itself, so 
soon as you shall fairly enter upon its experiences. 
Then if these ideas have no place in you, you will be 
obliged to acquire them slowly and painfully, or you 
will sink into a poor, selfish, discontented creature — and 
be, so far as others are concerned, either a nonentity, 
or a disgraceful hanger-on and looker-on. So I say, 
begin to take up life's duties now. Learn something 
of what life is, before you take upon yourself its graver 
responsibilities. 



LETTER VIII. 

THE BEAUTY AND BLESSEDNESS OF FEMALE 
PIETY. 

The cross, if rightly borne, shall be 
No burden, but support to thee. 

— Whittier. 

YOUNG women, this is my last letter addressed spe- 
cially to you ; and as I take your hand, and give 
you my adieu, I wish to say a few words which shall be 
worth a great deal to you. It is my opinion that to a 
certain extent, in certain directions, God meant that you 
should be dependent upon men, and that in this de- 
pendence should exist some of your profoundest and 
sweetest attractions and your noblest characteristics. 
Your bodies are smaller than those of men. You were 
not made to wrestle with the rough forces of nature. 
You were not made for war, or commerce, or agriculture. 
In all these departments, the iron wills and the iron 
muscles of man are alone at home. The bread you eat, 
and the fabrics you wear, are to be gathered from the 
earth by men. You are to be protected by men. 



The Blessedness of Female Piety. 133 

They build your houses ; they guard your persons. It 
is entirely natural for you to rely upon them for much 
that you have. You give, or may give, great rewards 
for all this. It is not a menial relation, nor one which 
detracts from your dignity in the least. The circle of 
human duties is only complete by the union of those of 
man and woman. Man has his sphere — woman, hers. 
We cannot talk of superiority among spheres and duties 
that are alike essential. Suffice it that, in the degree 
in which you are dependent upon man for support and 
protection, does he owe support and protection to you. 
He is bound to do for you what you, through the pecu- 
liarities of your constitution, are unable to do for your- 
self. You are never to quarrel with this arrangement. 
You will only make yourself unhappy by it, because, by 
quarrelling with God's plans, you essentially unsex your- 
self, and become a discord. Therefore recognize your 
dependence gladly and gracefully. Be at home in it, 
for in it lies your power for influence and for good. 

This advances us a step towards the point to which 
I wish to lead you. Now, if you will go with me into 
a circle of praying Christians, or if you will take up 
with me a list of the members of any church, I will 
show you a fact which I wish to connect with the facts 
stated in the preceding paragraph. You will find, I 
suppose, that at least two-thirds of the members of the 
prayer-meeting are women, and that the church regis- 
ter will show a corresponding proportion of female 



134 TitcomVs Letters. 

names. Why is this ? Is it because women are weaker 
than men, simply ? Is it because women are subject to 
smaller temptations than men ? Is it because theii 
passions are less powerful than those of men? Not at 
all — or not in any important degree. It is because a 
feeling of dependence is native in the female heart. It 
is because the pride of independence has little or no 
place there. It is because the female mind has to 
undergo, comparatively, a small revolution to become 
religious. Rather, perhaps, I should say, that one pow- 
erful barrier that stands before the path of every man 
in his approach to the valley of humiliation does not 
oppose the passage of the true woman. I suppose it is 
very rare that those who are denominated "strong- 
minded women" become religious. The pride of per- 
sonal independence is built before them by their own 
hands. 

So sweet and so natural a thing is piety among 
women that men have come to regard a woman without 
it as strange, if not unhealthy. The coarsest and most 
godless men often select pious wives, because they see 
that piety softens, and deepens, and elevates every 
natural grace of person, and every accomplishment of 
mind. Now my opinion is that Heaven, seeing how 
important it is for you to be its own children, in profes- 
sion and in spirit, has given special favors to your sex, 
through this simple fact or principle of dependence. It 
is your work to soften and refine men. Men living 



The Blessedness of Female Piety. 135 

without you, by themselves, become savage and sinful. 
The purer you are, the more are they restrained, and 
the more are they elevated. It is your work to form 
the young mind,— to give it direction and instruction — 
to develop its love for the good and the true. It is 
your work to make home happy — to nourish all the 
virtues, and instil all the sentiments which build men 
up into good citizens. The foundation of our national 
character is laid by the mothers of the nation. I say 
that Heaven, seeing the importance to the world of 
piety in you, has so modified your relations to man that 
it shall be comparatively easy for you to descend into 
that valley, over which all must walk, before their feet 
can stand upon the heights of Christian experience, 
between which and Heaven's door the ascent is easy. 

For my own part, I shrink with horror from a godless 
woman. There seems to be no light in her — no glory 
proceeding from her. There is something monstrous 
about her. I can see why men do not become religious. 
It is a hard thing — it is, at least, if experience and 
observation are to be relied on — for a man whose will 
has been made stern by encounters in the great battle 
of life, who is conscious of power and accustomed to 
have the minds around him bend to his, who possesses 
the pride of manhood and the self-esteem that springs 
naturally in the mind of one in his position, to become 
"as a little child." Woman has only to recognize her 
dependence upon One higher than man, and, in doing 



136 TitcomFs Letters. 

this, is obliged to do but little violence to her habits of 
thought, and no violence at all to such sentiments of 
independence as stand most in the way of man. So I 
say that a godless woman is a monstrous woman. She 
is an unreasonable woman. She is an offensive woman. 
Even an utterly godless man, unless he be debauched 
and debased to the position of an animal, deems such a 
woman without excuse. He looks on her with suspicion. 
He would not have such an one to take the care of his 
children. He would not trust her. 

I do not propose to offer you any incentives to piety 
drawn from a future condition of rewards and punish- 
ments. I leave it to the pulpits whose ministrations you 
attend to talk of this matter in their own way. My 
whole augument shall relate to the proprieties and 
necessities of the present life. It is proper that you 
serve the Being who made you, and that you love the 
One who redeemed you. It is proper that to all your 
graces you add that of unselfishness. It is proper that 
all the elements of your character be harmonized and 
sublimated by the tenderest devotion to the " One 
altogether lovely." It is proper that your heart be 
purified, so that all the influence which goes out of it, 
through the varied relationships of life, be good, and 
only good. I mean by the word " proper" all that the 
word proper can mean. It is eternally and immutably 
fit. I mean that it is improper and unfit that you should 
fail of piety. I mean that by carrying with you a rebel- 



The Blessedness of Female Piety. 137 

lious and cold and careless Jieart, you introduce among 
the sweetest harmonies of the wqrld, a harsh discord, 
which it is not fit and proper that yousshould introduce. 
You are a wandering star. You are a voteless bird. 
You are a motionless brook. The strings of youu* soul 
are not in tune with those chords which the Infinite \ 
hand sweeps as he evolves the music of the universe. 
Your being does not respond to the touch of Provi- 
dence ; and if Beauty, and Truth, and Goodness, and 
Love, come down to you, like angels out of heaven, and 
sing you their sweetest songs, you do not see their 
wings, or recognize their home and parentage. I 
say that it is not proper — it is inexpressibly unfit that 
you — a woman — with delicate sensibilities, and pure 
instincts and a dependent nature, should ignore the 
relations which exist between your soul and God, and 
put a veil of blackness between the light which he 
has lighted within you, and that Infinite fountain of 
light still open and ready to fill all your being with its 
divine radiance. 

Then, as to your necessities : First, remember what 
you are. You are really the consolers of the world. 
You attend the world in sickness ; you give all its 
medicines ; your society soothes the world after its toil, 
and rewards it for its perplexities ; you receive the in- 
fant when it enters upon existence ; you drape the cold 
form of the aged when life is past ; you settle the little 
difficulties, and assuage the sorrows of childhood ; you 



*3 8 TitcomVs L<- ers - 

minister to the poor an^ die distressed. Do you sup- 
pose that out of the resources of your poor heart, you 
can supply all the draughts that will be made upon your 
sympathies and their varied ministry ? Do you believe 
that y ou carry within your own bosom light for the 
'dying, hope for the despairing, consolation for the bereft, 
patience for the sick ? Nay, do you believe that you 
have light and hope and consolation and patience suffi- 
cient for your own soul's wants, while performing the 
ministries to which, in Heaven's economy, you are ap- 
pointed ? Piety is, then, an absolute necessity to you. 
You can no more perform these offices to which you are 
called, properly and efficiently, without piety, than a 
bird can fly without wings. You would be trying to 
make bricks without straw. Think of a woman by the 
side of a dying sister, or a sick child, or a sorrowing 
friend, or a broken-hearted and broken-spirited man, 
without a word of heaven in her mouth — without so 
much as the ability to whisper " Our Father," or even 
to point her finger hopefully towards the stars ! 

Again, your life and duties are peculiar, as your 
sphere is distinct. If you lead a worthy, womanly life, 
it will be a home life — free from great excitements. 
The current of your thoughts will flow in retired chan- 
nels. You will hear, outside, the braying of trumpets, 
and the roll of drums, and the din of wheels, and the 
rush and roar of the world's great business. Oftentimes, 
when you are busy with your modest affairs, and going 



The Blessedness of Female Piety, 139 

through the wearying routine of your life, you will be 
tempted to repine at their quietness and insipidness. 
Many a woman does the work of her life without being 
seen or noticed by the world. The world sees a family 
reared to virtue — one child after another growing into 
Christian manhood and womanhood, and at last it sees 
them all gathered around a grave where the mother that 
bore them rests from her labors. But the world has 
never seen that quiet woman laboring for her children, 
making their clothes, providing their food, teaching 
them their prayers, and making their homes comfort- 
able and happy. 

The world knows nothing, or does not think, of the 
fears, the pains, and the anxieties inseparable from the 
mother's office. She bears them alone, and discharges 
her peculiar responsibilities without assistance. No in- 
dividual in the world can do a mother's work for her. 
A family of young immortals is committed to her hands. 
The rearing and training of these form a business to 
which she has served no apprenticeship. If divine 
guidance and support be necessary to any one in the 
world, they are necessary to the wife and mother. It is 
a sad, sad thought to any son or daughter that his or 
her mother was not a woman of piety. The boy that 
feels that his name is mentioned in a good mother's 
prayers, is comparatively safe from vice, and the ruin to 
which it leads. The .sweetest thought that N. P. Willis 
ever penned grew out of a reference to his pious mother's 



140 TitcomFs Letters. 

prayers for him. Tossed by the waves, in a vessel which 
was bearing him homeward, he wrote : 

•'Sleep safe, O wave-worn mariner.. 

Nor fear to-night nor storm nor sea I 
The ear of heaven bends low to her ; 
He comes to shore who sails with me!" 

Will not piety be necessary to you ? Will not youl 
piety be necessary to your children ? 

And now, young women, a few closing words. I have 
no doubt many of you have read these letters with care, 
and with an earnest wish to profit by them. They have 
been written in all honesty and sincerity, and I leave 
them with you. The opinions I have given you have 
not been hastily formed, nor has the counsel I have 
urged upon you arisen from anything but a conscien- 
tious conviction of your wants, and a desire to help you 
to a womanhood, the noblest to be achieved in this 
world. Your happiness is very much in your own 
hands ; so are your usefulness and your good name. I 
do not ask you to be anything but a glad, sunny woman. 
I would have no counsels of mine recommended by long 
faces and formal behavior. I would have you so at 
peace with Heaven, with the world and with yourself, 
that tears shall flow only at the call of sympathy. I 
would have you immaculate as light, devoted to all good 
deeds, industrious, intelligent, patient, heroic. And 
crowning every grace of person and mind, every ac- 



The Blessedness of Female Piety. 141 

complishment, every noble sentiment, every womanly 
faculty, every delicate instinct, every true impulse, I 
would see religion upon your brow — the coronet by 
token of which God makes you a princess in his family, 
and an heir to the brightest glories, the sweetest plea- 
sures, the noblest privileges, and the highest honors of 
his kingdom. 



LETTERS TO 
YOUNG MARRIED PEOPLE. 



LETTERS TO YOUNG MARRIED 
PEOPLE. 



LETTER I. 



THE FIRST ESSENTIAL DUTIES OF THE CONNUBIAL 
RELA TION. 

O let us walk the world, so that our love 
Burn like a blessed beacon, beautiful, 
Upon the walls of life's surrounding dark. 

— Gerald Massey. 

YOU are married, and it is for better or for worse. 
You are bound to one another as companions for 
life. Did it ever occur to you that this is a momentous 
fact ? Did you ever think that since you came into the 
world, a precious lump of helpless life, there is no fact 
of your history which will so much affect your destiny as 
this ? I do not propose to inquire into the motives 
which led you to this union. You may have come to- 
gether like two streams, flowing naturally towards one 
point, and then mingling their waters with scarcely a 
7 



146 TitcomV s Letters. 

ripple, to pass on together to the great ocean. You 
may have come together under the wild stress of pas- 
sion, or the feeble attractions of fancy, or the sordid im- 
pulsions of interest, or by force of the purest love. But 
the time for considering the motives which have united 
you is past. You are married, for better or for worse. 
The word is spoken. The bond is sealed ; and the 
only question now is — " how shall this union be made 
to contribute the most to your happiness and your best 
development ? " It is to answer this question as well 
as I can, that I write this series of letters. 

You have but one life to live, and no amount of 
money, or influence, or fame, can pay you for a life of 
unhappiness. You cannot afford to be unhappy. You 
cannot afford to quarrel with one another. You cannot 
afford to cherish a single thought, to harbor a single de- 
sire, to gratify a single passion, or indulge a single self- 
ish feeling that will tend to make this union anything 
but a source of happiness to you. So it becomes you, 
at starting, to have a perfect understanding with one 
another. It becomes you to resolve that you will be 
happy together, at any rate ; or that if you suffer, it shall 
be from the same cause, and in perfect sympathy. You 
are not to let any human being step between you, under 
any circumstances. Neither father nor mother, neither 
brother nor sister, neither friend nor neighbor, has any 
right to interfere with your relations, so long, at least, 
as you are agreed. You twain are to be one flesh — ■ 



Duties of the Connubial Relation. 147 

identified in objects, desires, sympathies, fortunes, posi- 
tions — everything. You are to know no closer friend. 
Now I care not how pure and genuine may be the love 
which has brought you together, if you have any charac- 
ter at all, you will find that this perfect union cannot 
be effected without compromises. Human character, 
by a wise provision of Providence, is infinitely varied, 
and there are not two individuals in existence so entirely 
alike in their tastes, habits of thought, and natural apti- 
tudes, that they can keep step with one another over all 
the rough places in the path of life. So there must be 
a bending to one another. I suppose the brides are few 
who have not wept once over the hasty words of a hus- 
band not six months married ; and I suppose there are 
few husbands who, in the early part of their married 
life, have not felt that perhaps their choice was not a 
wise one. 

Breaches of harmony will occur between imperfect 
men and women ; but all bad results may be avoided 
by a resolution, well kept on both sides, to ask the 
other's pardon for every offence — for the hasty word, 
the peevish complaint, the unshared pleasure — every- 
thing that awakens an unpleasant thought, or wounds a 
sensibility. This reparation must be made at once ; 
and if you have a frank and worthy nature, a quarrel is 
impossible. My opinion is that ninety-nine one-hun- 
dredths of the unhappiness in the connubial relation, is 
the absolute fault, and not primarily the misfortune, of 



148 TitcomFs Letters. 

the parties. You can be happy together if you will', 
but the agreement to be happy must be mutual. The 
compromise cannot be all on one side. It is a mulish 
pride in men, and a sensitive will in women, that make 
the principal difficulty in all unhappy cases. I say to 
every man and woman, if you have done anything 
which has displeased your companion, beg her or his 
pardon, whether you were intentionally guilty or not. 
It is the cheapest and quickest way to settle the busi- 
ness. One confession makes way for another, and the 
matter is closed — closed, most probably, with the very 
sweetest kiss of the season. 

Be frank with one another. Many a husband and 
wife go on from year to year with thoughts in their 
hearts, that they hesitate to reveal to one another. If 
you have anything in your mind concerning your com- 
panion that troubles you, out with it. Do not brood 
over it. Perhaps it can be explained on the spot, and 
the matter for ever put to rest. Draw your souls closer 
and closer together, from year to year. Get all obsta- 
cles out of the way. Just as soon as one arises, attend 
to it, and get rid of it. At last, they will all disappear. 
You will become wonted to one another's habits and 
frames of mind and peculiarities of disposition ; and 
love, respect, and charity will take care of the rest. 

I insist on this, because it is the very first essential 
thing. I insist on it, because I believe that if there be 
sufficient affinity between two persons to bring them 



Duties of the Connubial Relation. 149 

together, and to lead them to unite their lives, it is their 
fault if they fail to live happily, and still more and more 
happily as the years advance. I will go so far as to sa5 
that I believe that there are few women with whom a 
kind, sensible man may not live happily, if he be so 
disposed ; and I know that woman is more plastic in 
her nature, and more susceptible to love than man. 
So, when I hear of unhappy matches, I know that some- 
body is to blame. 

This intimate association of husband and wife — nay, 
this identity — can never be preserved while either is 
blabbing of the other. A man who tells his neighbors 
that his wife is extravagant, that she is wasteful, that he 
never finds her home, that she will never go out with 
him, or that she is or does anything which he desires 
her not to be or do, does a shameful thing, and a cruel 
thing, besides making a fool of himself. A woman who 
bruits her husband's faults, who tells the neighbors how 
much he seeks the society of other women, how much 
he spends for cigars, how late he is out at night, how 
lazy he is, how little he cares for what interests her, how 
stingy he is with his money, and all that sort of thing, 
sins against herself, and consents, or voluntarily enlists, 
to publish that which is essentially her own shame. A 
husband and wife have no business to tell one another's 
faults to anybody but to one another. They cannot do 
it without shame. Their grievances are to be settled in 
private, between themselves ; and in all public places, 



150 TitcomVs Letters. 

and among friends, they are to preserve towards one 
another that nice consideration and entire respectful- 
ness which their relation enjoins. For they are one in 
the law ; and for a man or woman to publish the truth, 
that they are not one in fact, is to acknowledge that 
they are living in the relation of an unwilling lover and a 
compulsory mistress. 

A great deal of evil might be prevented between you 
if you would allow your affection to give itself natural 
expression. I know of husbands so proud and stiff and 
surly that they never have a kiss or a caress, or a fond 
word for their wives whom they really love. I know 
such husbands who have most lovable wives — wives to 
whom a single tender demonstration, that shall tell to 
their hearts how inexpressibly pleasant their faces and 
their society are, and how fondly they are loved, would 
be better than untold gold — wives, to whom caresses 
are sweeter than manna, and fond words more musical 
than robin-songs in the rain. They go through life 
starving for them— bearing buds of happiness upon their 
bosoms that must be kissed into bloom, or wither and 
fall. Yet the cast-iron husband goes about his business 
without even a courteous "good morning," eats his 
meals with immense regularity, provides for his family 
exemplarily, imagines that he is an excellent husband, 
and entertains a profound contempt for silly people who 
are fond of one another. 

Heaven be thanked that there are some in the world 



Ditties of the Comnibial Relation. 151 

to whose hearts the barnacles will not cling ! Heaven 
be thanked for the young old boys and the young old 
girls —boys and girls for ever — who, until the evening 
of life falls upon them, interchange the sweet caresses 
that call back the days of courtship and early marriage ! 
Thank Heaven that my wife can never grow old ; that 
so long as a lock adorns her temples, brown or gray, 
my finger shall toy with it ; that so long as I can sit 
there shall be a place for her on my knee ; and that so 
long as I can whisper and she can hear, she shall know 
by fond confession that her soul is next to mine — linked 
to mine — mine ! 

I wish in this letter to impress upon you the idea 
which few married people apparently thoroughly com- 
prehend, that you — husband and wife — are one, — that 
you have no separate interests, that you can have no 
separate positions in society, that you should desire 
none, and that it is within your ability, and is mosi im- 
peratively your duty, to be happy together. In order 
to be what you should be to each other, and in order to 
be happy yourselves — in your own hearts — you should 
begin right. You should be willing at all times to bear 
one another's burdens ; and in fact, I know of no better 
rule for accomplishing the end I seek for you than by 
your constantly studying and ministering to the happi- 
ness of each other. Selfishness is the bane of all life, 
and especially of married life ; and if a husband and 
wife devote themselves to one another's happiness, re- 



152 TitcornVs Letters. 

linquishing their own selfish gratification for that end, 
the task is accomplished — the secret solved. The path 
of such a pair is paved with gold. Their life is a song 
of praise. All good angels are about them, bearing 
consolations for every sorrow, antidotes for every bane, 
rewards for every labor, and strength for every trial. 
That is essential marriage ; and, as Paul Dombey said 
when Mrs. Pipchin told him there was nobody else like 
her, "that is a very good thing." 

I suppose there is a modicum of romance in most 
natures, and that if it gather about any event, it is that 
of marriage. Most people marry ideals. There is 
more or less of fictitious and fallacious glory resting 
upon the head of every bride, which the young husband 
sees and believes in. Both men and women manufac- 
ture perfections in their mates by a happy process of 
their imaginations, and then marry them. This, of 
course, wears away. By the time the husband has seen 
his wife eat heartily of pork and beans, and, with her 
hair frizzled, and her oldest dress on, full of the enter- 
prise of overhauling things, he sees that she belongs to 
the same race with himself. And she, when her hus- 
band gets up cross in the morning, and undertakes to 
shave himself with cold water and a dull razor, while 
his suspenders dangle at his heels, begins to see that 
man is a very prosaic animal. In other words, there is 
such a thing as a honeymoon, of longer or shorter du- 
ration ; and while the moonshine lasts, the radiance of 



Duties of the Connubial Relation. 153 

the seventh heaven cannot compare with it. It is a 
delicious little delirium — a febrile mental disease — 
which, like measles, never comes again. 

When the honeymoon passes away, setting behind 
dull mountains, or dipping silently into the stormy sea 
of life, the trying hour of married life has come. Be- 
tween the parties, there are no more illusions. The 
feverish desire of possession has gone— vanished into 
gratification— and all excitement has receded. Then 
begins, or should begin, seriously, the business of adap- 
tation. If they find that they do not love one another 
as they thought they did, they should conscientiously 
and earnestly foster and strengthen every bond of at- 
tachment which exists. They should double their assid- 
uous attentions to one another, and be jealous of every- 
thing which tends in the slightest degree to separate 
them. Life is too precious to be thrown away in secret 
regrets or open differences. 

I say to any married pair, from whom the romance of 
life has fled, and who are discontented in the slightest 
degree with their condition and relations, begin this 
work of reconciliation before you are a day older. Re- 
new the attentions of earlier days. Draw your hearts 
closer together. Talk the thing all over. Acknowledge 
your faults to one another, and determine that hence- 
forth you will be all in all to each other ; and, my word 
for it, you shall find in your relation the sweetest joy 
earth has for you. There is no other way for you to do. 



154 TitcornVs Letters. 

If you are unhappy at home, you must be unhappy 
abroad. The man or woman who has settled down 
upon the conviction that he or she is attached for life 
to an uncongenial yoke -fellow, and that there is no way 
of escape, has lost life. There is no effort too costly to 
be made which can restore to its setting upon their 
bosoms the missing pearl. 



LETTER II. 

SPECIAL DUTIES OF THE HUSBAND. 

He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his 
twn flesh ; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. 

— St. Paul. 

YOUNG husband, this letter is for you. Have -you 
an idea that you have anything like a just compre- 
hension of the nature of the being whom God has given 
you for a companion ? If you have, you labor under a 
very serious mistake. You may live with her until, 
amid gray hairs and grandchildren, you celebrate your 
golden wedding, and then know but a tithe of her 
strength and tenderness. I believe in such a thing as 
sex of soul. A woman's happiness flows to her from 
sources and through channels, different from those which 
give origin and conduct to the happiness of man, and, 
in a measure, will continue to do so for ever. Her 
faculties bend their exercise towards different issues ; 
her social and spiritual natures demand a different ali- 
ment. What will satisfy you will not satisfy her. That 
which most interests you is not that in which her soul 



156 TitcomVs Letters. 

finds its most grateful exercise. Her love for you may 
bring her intimately into sympathy with your pursuits, 
through all their wide range, from a hotly driven politi- 
cal contest to breaking up a piece of wild land, or even 
to the cultivation of an unthrifty whisker ; but it will 
'only be because they interest the man she loves above 
all others. She is actuated by motives that do not affect 
you at all, or not to the extent that they do her. If she 
be led into sin, you renounce and denounce her as a 
thing unclean ; yet, through all your debauchery, your 
untruth to her, your beastly drunkenness, your dis- 
honor, your misfortune, she will cling to you. There is 
in her heart a depth of tenderness of which neither you 
nor she herself has any conception. Only the circum- 
stances and exigencies of life will reveal it ; and this is 
why a healthy female soul is always fresh and new. 
Longfellow, in his " Spanish Student," gives a hint of 
this— and a pretty deep one— in the language he puts 
into the mouth of Preciosa's lover : — 

"What most I prize in woman 
Is her affections, not her intellect. 
The intellect is finite ; but the affections 
Are infinite, and cannot be exhausted." 

" The world of the affections is thy world ;— 
Not that of man's ambition. In that stillness, 
Which most becomes a woman, calm and holy, 
Thou sittest by the fireside of the heart, 
Feeding its flames." 



Special Duties of the Husband. 157 

"The affections are infinite, and cannot be ex- 
hausted ; " and it is through her affections, and through 
the deepest of all affections, that happiness comes to the 
bosom of your wife. The world may pile its honors 
upon you until your brain goes wild with delirious ex- 
citement ; wealth may pour into your coffers through 
long years of prosperity; you may enjoy the fairest re- 
wards of enterprise and excellence ; but if all these 
things are won by depriving your wife of your society — 
by driving her out of your thoughts, and by interfering 
with the constant sympathetic communion of your heart 
with hers, she cannot but feel that what enriches you im- 
poverishes her, and that your gain, whatever it may be, 
is at her expense. She may enjoy your reputation and 
your wealth, your successes and good fortunes, but you 
and your society are things that are infinitely more 
precious to her. She depends upon you, naturally and 
by force of circumstances. Friends may crowd around 
her ; but if you come not, she is not satisfied. She 
may have spread before her a thousand delicacies ; but 
if they are unshared with you, she would exchange them 
all for an orange which you bring home to her as an evi- 
dence that you have thought of her. The dress you se- 
lected when in the city is the dearest, though she may ac- 
knowledge to herself that she would have chosen different 
colors and material. In short, it is from your heart, and 
the world coming through your heart, that she draws that 
sustenance and support which her deepest nature craves. 



158 TitcomFs Letters. 

Now, how are you dealing by this wife of yours ? 
Do you say that you have all you can attend to in 
your business, and that she must look out for herself? 
Do you forget that she lives in the house, away from 
the excitements of the world which so much interest 
you, and that the very sweetest excitement of the day 
is that which throws the warm blood in her heart into 
eddies as she hears your step at the door ? Do you for- 
get that she has no pleasure in publicplaces unless you 
are at her side ? Are you unmindful that she has no 
such pleasant walks as those which she takes with her 
hand upon your arm ? Do you ignore the fact that she 
has a claim upon your time ? Do you fail to remember 
that you took her out of a pleasant family circle, away 
from the associations of her childhood, and that she has 
no society in all the wide world which she prizes so 
highly as yours ? Do you forget that you owe your first 
duty to her, and that you have no right to give to so- 
ciety, or to your own pleasure, the time which neces- 
sarily involves neglect of her ? To come to a practical 
point — is it one of the aims of your life to give to your 
wife a portion of your time and society, so that she shall 
not always be obliged to sit alone, and go out alone ? 

There are some poor specimens of your sex in the 
world who not only do not feel that their wives have 
any special claim on their consideration and their time, 
but who take the occasion, when in the presence of their 
wives, to make themselves generally despicable. I 



Special Duties of the HiLsband. 159 

know a man whose appearance when in society, or 
mingling in the common affairs of business, has all the 
blandness and fragrance of newly mown hay. He 
touches his hat to the ladies whom he meets in the 
street with a grace which a D'Orsay would honor with 
admiration, and gives them a smile as genial and radiant 
as a harvest moon. He bears with him all the polish 
and grace of a gentleman. The concentrated virtues of 
all the lubricating oils could not add to the ease of his 
manners. People cannot imagine how such a man 
could be anything but the best of husbands ; but he is 
not any such thing. If I were a Jew, and not particu- 
larly fond of bacon, I should say that he was a hog in 
his own house. He is, there, domineering, peevish, ex- 
acting, and hateful. I have never known him to speak 
an affectionate or pleasant word to the best of wives. 
Nothing is out of place in the house for which she is not 
reproached in fretful and insulting language. Nothing 
goes wrong out of doors for which he does not take re- 
venge, or show his spite, by finding fault with the com- 
panion of his life. He criticises her cooking and her 
personal appearance, and, in short, lets off upon her 
wounded but patient ear all the foul accumulations of 
his miserable nature and most contemptible disposition. 
Although some powerful impressions received in early 
life have induced me to oppose corporeal punishment 
on principle, I have sometimes wondered whether I 
should be entirely inconsolable if he should, some time, 



160 TitcomFs Letters. 

be cowhided, kicked, cuffed, maimed, and otherwise 
shamefully entreated. 

But this is an extreme case, you say. Well, it ought 
to be ; but will you just stop for a moment, and ask 
yourself where it is that you show the worst side of 
your nature ? Where is it that you feel at the greatest 
liberty to exhibit your spleen, to give way to your 
fretfulness, to speak harsh words, to make hateful little 
speeches that are contemptible from their unprovoked 
bitterness ? Is it among your fellows, and in the society 
of other ladies that you take occasion to say your 
meanest things ? No, sir ! You go home to your wife ; 
you go home from those who care no more for you than 
they do for a thousand others, to the woman whom in 
the presence of God and men you have promised to 
love and cherish above all others ; to the woman who 
loves you, and who regards you as better than all else 
earthly ; to a woman who is unprotected save by you, 
and wholly unprotected from you, and spit your spleen 
into her ear, and say things to her which, if any one 
else were to say, would secure him a well deserved 
caning. Are you not ashamed of this ? You say things 
to her which you would not dare to say to any other 
lady, however much you might be provoked. You say 
them — O courageous friend ! because nobody has the 
right to cowhide you for it. Isn't that brave and manly ? 
As the good mothers of us all have told us a thousand 
times, " don't you never let me hear of your doing that 



Special Duties of the Husband. 161 

again." It isn't pretty. It is ineffably wicked and das- 
tardly. 

That husbands and wives may entertain perfect sym- 
pathy, there should be the closest confidence between 
them. I need not tell the wife to give her husband the 
most perfect confidence in all affairs. She does this 
naturally, if her husband do not repulse her. But you, 
young husband, do not give your wife your confidence — 
you do not make her your confidante — you have an idea 
that your business is not your wife's business. So you 
keep your troubles, your successes — everything — to 
yourself. Numberless disturbances of married life be- 
gin exactly at this point Your wife receives the money 
for her personal expenses, and for the expenses of the 
house, at your hands. You do not tell her how hardly 
it has been won, with how much difficulty you have con- 
trived to get it into your purse, and how necessary it is 
for her to be economical. You often deceive her, out 
of genuine love for her, into the belief that you are 
really doing very well ; and yet you wonder the woman 
can give twenty dollars for a hat and fifty dollars for a 
cloak. Perhaps you chide her for her extravagance, 
and so, in course of time, she comes to think you have 
got a niggardly streak in you, and very naturally rebels 
against it. She will not be curtailed in her expendi- 
tures. She dresses no better than her neighbors. So 
you run your fingers through your hair, and sigh over 
the fact that you have got an extravagant wife, while 



162 TitcomVs Letters. 

she, in turn, wonders how it is possible for a loving 
husband to be so selfish and stingy. 

7 hus for life, perhaps, a hostility of feeling and in- 
terest is established, which might all have been pre- 
vented by a free and full statement of your circum* 
stances. This would interest her in, and identify her 
with, all your trials. It is entirely rational and right 
that your wife should understand the basis of all your 
requirements of her ; and, when she does this, the 
chances are that she will not only be economical her- 
self, but will point out leakages in your prosperity for 
which you are responsible rather than herself. It is 
possible that you have a companion as much troubled 
by figures as the child-wife, Dora, was. If so, I am 
sorry for you ; but, if so, very luckily she will do what 
you require of her without a reason. 

I understand perfectly the desire of a young and 
sensitive husband to give his wife all the money she 
wants. You would fulfil her wishes in all things ; 
especially would you allow her those means that wili 
enable her to gratify her tastes in dress and household 
equipage. You dislike to appear unthrifty, inefficient, 
or mean, and you are willing to sacrifice much, that no 
care, no small economies, no apprehension of coming 
evil, should cloud the brow of the one you love. Well, 
I honor this feeling, for it has its birth in a sensitive, 
manly pride ; but it may go too far — very much too 
far. It has carried many a man straight into the open 



Special Duties of the HiLsband. 163 

throat of bankruptcy, and ruined both husband and 
wife for life. No, you must tell her all about it. She 
must know what your objects and projects are. She 
must know what your income is, and the amount of 
your annual expenses. Then, if she be a good wife, 
and worthy of a good husband, she will become more 
thoroughly your partner, and " cut her garment accord- 
ing to the cloth." The interest which you thus secure 
from her in your business affairs, will be the greatest 
possible comfort to you. She will enjoy all your suc- 
cesses, for they become her own. She will sympathize 
in all your trials, and you will find great consolation in 
feeling that there is one heart in the world that under- 
stands you. 

And this matter of confidence between you and your 
wife must be carried into everything, for she is your life- 
partner — your next soul. There is no way by which 
she can understand fully her relations to the commu- 
nity and its various interests, save by understanding your 
own. So I say in closing, that to your wife you owe a 
reasonable portion of your time and society, the very 
choicest side of your nature and character when in her 
society, and your fullest confidence in all the affairs con- 
nected with your business, your ambitions, your hopes, 
and your fears. In the fierce conflicts of life you will 
find abundant recompense for all this. Your wife will 
soften your resentments, assuage your disappointments, 
pour balm upon your wounded spirit, and harmonize 



1 64 Tit comb's Letters. 

and soften you. At the same time, the exercise of heart 
and soul which this will give her, will make her a nobler, 
freer, better woman. It will give her greater breadth 
and strength of mind, and deepen her sensibilities. To 
a pair thus living and acting, may well be applied a 
couplet which occurs in that charming picture painted 
by Pinckney, of the Indian husband and his pale-facec* 
wife : — 

" She humanizes him, and he 
Educates her to liberty." 



LETTER III. 

SPECIAL DUTIES OF THE WIFE. 

And when the King's decree which he shall make shall be published 
throughout all his empire (for it is great), all the wives shall give to theii 
husbands honor, both to great and small. 

— Book of Esther. 

Teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love 

their children, to be discreet, keepers at home, good, obedient to their 

own husbands. 

—St. Paul. 

YOUNG wife, I talked to your husband in my last 
letter, and now I address you. I told him that 
you had a claim on his time and society. There are 
qualifications of this claim which concern you particu- 
larly, and so I speak to you about them. Your husband 
labors all day — every day — and during the waking hours, 
between the conclusion of his labor at night and its com- 
mencement in the morning, he must have recreation of 
some kind ; and here comes in your duty. If you do 
not make his home pleasant, so that the fulfilment of 
his duty to you shall be a sweet pleasure to him, you 
cannot hope for much of his company. What his na- 
ture craves it will have — must have. He cannot be a 



1 66 TitcomUs Letters. 

slave all the time — a slave to his work by day and a 
slave to you by night. He must have hours of free- 
dom ; and happy are you if, of his own choice, he take 
the enjoyment you offer in the place of anything which 
the outside world has to give. I suppose there are few 
men who, when their work is over, and their supper 
eaten, do not have a desire to go down town " to meet 
a man," or visit "the post-office." There is a natural 
desire in every heart to have, every day, an hour of 
social freedom — a few minutes, at least, of walk in the 
open air and contact with the minds of other men. 
This is entirely a natural and necessary thing ; and you 
should encourage rather than seek to prevent it, unless 
your husband is inclined to visit bad places, and asso- 
ciate with bad companions. 

Precisely here is a dangerous point for both husband 
and wife. The wife has been alone during the day, and 
thinks that her husband ought to spend the whole even- 
ing with her. The husband has been confined to his 
labor, and longs for an hour of freedom, in whatever 
direction his feet may choose to wander. Perhaps the 
wife thinks he has no business to wander at all, and that 
his custom is to wander too widely and too long. She 
complains, and becomes exacting. She cannot bear to 
have her husband out of her sight for a moment, after 
he quits his work. Now, if there be anything in all this 
world that will make a husband hate his wife, it is a 
constant attempt on her part to monopolize all his lei' 



Special Duties of tlie Wife. 167 

sure time and all his society, to curtail his freedom, and 
a tendency to be for ever fretting his ears with the state- 
ment that " she is nothing, of course," that he " does 
not care anything about her," and that he dislikes his 
home. Treatment like this will just as certainly rouse 
all the perverseness in a man's nature as a spark will 
ignite gunpowder. Injustice and inconsiderateness will 
not go down, especially when administered by a man's 
companion. He knows that he loves his home, and 
that he needs and has a right to a certain amount of his 
time, away from home ; and if he be treated as if he 
possessed no such necessity and right, he will soon learn 
to be all that his wife represents him to be. I tell you 
that a man wants very careful handling. You must re- 
member that he can owe no duty to you which does not 
involve a duty from you. You have the charge of the 
home, and if you expect him to spend a portion, or all 
of his evening in it, you must make it attractive. If you 
expect a man, as a matter of duty, to give any consider- 
able amount of time to your society, daily, through a 
long series of years, you are to see that that society is 
worth something to him. Where are your accomplish- 
ments ? Where are your books ? Where are your sub- 
jects of conversation ? 

But let us take up this question separately : how shall 
a wife make her home pleasant and her society attrac- 
tive ? This is a short question, but a full answer would 
make a book. I can^only touch a few points. In the 



1 68 Tit combos Letters. 

first place, she should never indulge in fault- finding. If 
a man has learned to expect that he will invariably be 
found fault with by his wife, on his return home, and 
that the burden of her words will be complaint, he has 
absolutely no pleasure to anticipate and none to enjoy. 
There is but one alternative for a husband in such a 
case : either to steel himself against complaints, or be 
harrowed up by them and made snappish and waspish. 
They never produce a good effect under any circum- 
stances whatever. There should always be a pleasant 
word and look ready for him who returns from the toils 
of th& day, wearied with earning the necessaries of the 
family. If a pretty pair of slippers lie before the fire, 
ready for his feet, so much the better. 

Then, again, the desire to be pleasing in person should 
never leave a wife for a day. The husband who comes 
home at night, and finds his wife dressed to receive him, 
— dressed neatly and tastefully, because she wishes to 
be pleasant to his eye, cannot, unless he be a brute, 
neglect her, or slight her graceful pains-taking. It is a 
compliment to him. It displays a desire to maintain 
the charms which first attracted him, and to keep intact 
the silken bonds which her tasteful girlhood had fastened 
to his fancy. 

I have seen things managed very differently from this. 
I have known an undressed head of " horrid hair " worn 
all day long, because nobody but the husband would see 
it. I have seen breakfast dresses with sugar plantations 



Special Duties of the Wife. 169 

on them of very respectable size, and most disagreeable 
stickiness. In short, I have seen slatterns, whose kiss 
would not tempt the hungriest hermit that ever forswore 
women, and was sorry for it. I have seen them with 
neither collar nor zone, — with a person which did not 
possess a single charm to a husband with his eyes open, 
and in his right mind. This is all wrong, young wife, 
for there is no being in this world for whom it is so 
much for your interest to dress, as for your husband. 
Your happiness depends much on your retaining not only 
the esteem of your husband, but his admiration. He 
should see no greater neatness and no more taste in 
material and fitness, in any woman's dress, than in 
yours ; and there is no individual in the world before 
whom you should always appear with more thorough 
tidiness of person than your husband. If you are care- 
less in this particular, you absolutely throw away some 
of the strongest and most charming influences which 
you possess. What is true of your person is also true 
of your house. If your house be disorderly ; if dust 
cover the table, and invite the critical finger to write 
your proper title ; if the furniture look as if it were 
tossed into a room from a cart ; if your table-cloth have 
a more intimate acquaintance with gravy than with soap, 
and from cellar to garret there be n,o order, do you 
blame a husband for not wanting to sit down and spend 
his evening with you ? I should blame him, of course, 
on general principles^ but, as all men are not so sensible 



170 Tit comb's Letters. 

as I am, I should charitably entertain all proper ex- 
cuses. 

Still again, have you anything to talk about — any- 
thing better than scandal — with which to interest and 
refresh his weary mind ? I believe in the interchange 
of caresses, as I have told you before, but kisses are 
only the spice of life. You cannot always sit on your 
husband's knee, for, in the first place, it would tire him, 
and in the second place, he would get sick of it. You 
should be one with your husband, but never in the 
shape of a parasite. He should be able to see growth in 
your soul, independent of him ; and whenever he truly 
feels that he has received from you a stimulus to prog- 
ress and to goodness, you have refreshed him, and 
made a great advance into his heart. 

He should see that you really have a strong desire, to 
make him happy, and to retain for ever the warmest 
place in his respect, his admiration, and his Lfifection. 
Enter into all his plans with interest. Sweeten all his 
troubles with your sympathy. Make him feel that there 
is one ear always open to the revelation of his experien- 
ces, that there is one heart that never misconstrues him, 
that there is one refuge for him in all circumstances ; 
and that in all weariness of body and soul, there is one 
warm pillow for his head, beneath which a heart is beat- 
ing with the same unvarying truth and affection, through 
all gladness and sadness, as the faithful chronometer 
suffers no perturbation of its rhythm by shine or shower. 



Special Duties of the Wife. 171 

A husband who has such a wife as this, has little temp- 
tation to spend much time away from home. He can- 
not stay away long at a time. He may " meet a man," 
but the man will not long detain him from his wife. He 
may go to the " post-office," but he will not call upon 
the friend's wife on the way. He can do better. The 
great danger is that he will love his home too well— that 
he will neither be willing to have you visit your aunts 
and cousins, nor, without a groan, accept an invitation 
to tea at your neighbor's. 

But I leave this special point, to which I have devoted 
my space somewhat improvidently. There is one rela- 
tion which you bear to your husband, or one aspect of 
your relation to him, to which I have not alluded suffi- 
ciently. You are not only the wife of his bosom — the 
object of his affections, but you have a business relation 
with him — you are his helpmate. To a very great ex- 
tent you are dependent upon him, but you are also his 
assistant, — bound to use his money economically, and 
to aid, so far as you can, in saving and accumulating it. 
The woman who feels that she has a right to spend 
every cent that " the old man " allows her, and that all 
she gets out of him is hers to lavish upon her vanities, 
takes a very low view of her relations to him. It is 
simply the view of a mistress, and is utterly dishonora- 
ble — utterly mercenary. The money which he puts into 
your hand endows you simply with a stewardship. You 
have no right to waste it, or to part with it, for anything 



172 TitcomFs Letters. 

but such values as are consistent with his means. You 
have consented to be the partner of his life, and you 
have no more right to squander his money than his busi- 
ness partner has. It is your duty to husband it ; and 
happy are you if your companion has such confidence in 
your faithfulness to him and his interest, that he puts 
money into your hand always willingly, believing that it 
will be parted with judiciously, and with discreet and 
conscientious regard to his means and abilities. If your 
husband has no confidence in your economy and dis- 
cretion, and consequently stints you, and absolutely 
feels obliged to place you in the position of a favorite 
dependent and pensioner — a plaything or a housekeeper 
for whom he has got to pay— you are not happy by any 
means. 

You can do very much in your character of helpmate 
to lighten your husband's cares, and relieve him from 
anxieties. If he finds you looking closely after his in- 
terests, buying economically the food for his table, and 
never wastefully sacrificing your old dresses in conse- 
quence of your thirst for new, always counting the cost 
of every object which you may desire, you relieve his 
mind from a load of care which no man can carry with- 
out embarrassment. A man who feels that there is in 
his own house a leak which will absorb all he may earn, 
be that little or much, and that he has got to suffer it, 
and suffer from it, or institute restrictions that will prob- 
ably make him appear mean in the eyes of his wife 



Special Duties of the Wife. 173 

(wasteful wives are very apt to have mean husbands), 
the great stimulus and encouragement of his industry 
are taken away from him. 

The full appreciation of your character, as your hus- 
band's helpmate, depends upon the thorough identifica- 
tion of yourself with him. Of this I have talked before, 
and call it up again for the purpose of showing you that 
there is absolutely no aspect of your relation to him 
which can be considered legitimate and complete that 
does not involve his identification. It is an equal thing. 
You are interested in your husband's expenditures ; and 
he is interested in yours. You have cast in your lot 
together — your whole lot ; and he has no more right 
to expend his money in such a way as to embarrass you, 
and deprive you of what you need, than you have to 
squander the means which he places at your disposal. 
It is a partnership concern, and if you succeed in man- 
aging your department of it in such a way as to secure 
your husband's confidence, fairly considering the cost of 
every cent to him, he will feel that he is appreciated, 
honored, and loved. Very likely he will understand 
this better than tasteful comforts and tender demonstra- 
tions of a lighter nature — demonstrations that involve 
no self-denial. 



LETTER IV. 

THE REARING OF CHILDREN. 

Once thou wert hidden in her painful side, 

A boon unknown, a mystery and a fear ; 

Strange pangs she bore for thee; but He whose name 

Is everlasting Love hath healed her pain ; 

And paid her suffering hours with living joy. 

— Henry Alford, 

Hail, wedded Love ! mysterious law ; true source 
Of human offspring ! 

— Milton. 

MY theory of life is that it is a school of mental 
and moral development — that God intended that 
each soul should pass under a series of influences, whose 
office it should be to evolve all its faculties, and soften 
and harmonize them. To this end, he has laid upon 
each a sweet necessity to adopt the ordinances he has 
contrived. When I speak of necessity, I do not mean 
compulsion, save in a limited sense — compulsion entire- 
ly consistent with individual election. Thus I believe 
that there is a very material portion of mental and 
moral development which cannot be achieved out of 



The Rearing of Children. 175 

the marriage relation; and, to biing men and women 
into this relation, he has given them the sentiment of 
love, and the desire of mutual personal possession. 
This sentiment and desire are made so strong that they 
may hardly be resisted, so that all shall choose to be 
joined in conjugal relations. Thus the strong are soft- 
ened by the weak, and the weak are invigorated by the 
strong ; and the influences of men and women upon 
each other become the most powerful agencies for their 
mutual harmonious growth. But this is not all. When 
a pair have become united in wedlock, there rises in 
each healthy heart a desire for offspring. Nothing is 
more natural than this desire, and nothing more im- 
perative. Its germ is seen far back in childhood. The 
boy's love of pets is but a manifestation of the primary 
outreachings of this desire, which fasten at first upon 
the only possible objects ; and there probably never 
lived a little girl that did not love her doll beyond all 
other playthings. She takes it first and retains it the 
longest of any. 

This brings me to the subject of children, as legiti- 
mately something to be talked about in these letters. 
The having and the rearing of children form one of 
God's ordinances for making you what you should be — • 
what he wishes you to be. They are as necessary to 
you as you are to them. You can no more reach the 
highest and most harmonious development of which 
you are capable without children, than you can develop 



176 Titcomb's Letters. 

a muscle without exercise. Without them, one of the 
most beautiful regions of your nature must for ever 
remain without appropriate and direct culture. The 
offices of children in the culture of their parents are 
manifold. In the first place, they are a conservative 
and regulating force. A pair living together without 
children naturally become selfish. A pair unwatched 
by innocent eyes are often thrown off their guard in 
their language towards, and treatment of, each other. 
They lose one great stimulus to industry, and do not 
possess that which is, perhaps, the strongest bond, under 
all the circumstances of life, which can bind husband 
and wife together. There can be no true development 
of heart and mind where pure selfishness is the pre- 
dominant principle ; so God ordains that in each house 
there shall be little ones, more precious than all else, 
who shall engage the sympathy, tax the efforts, and 
absorb the love of those who sustain to them the rela- 
tion of parents. The law is irreversible that our best 
individual progress in mental and moral good shall be 
attained by efforts devoted to others ; and in children, 
each parent finds the nearest objects of such devotion. 
And there is, perhaps, nothing which so tends to soften 
the heart, to develop the kindlier affections, and to un- 
lock and chasten the sympathies of men and women, as 
the children which sit around their table, and frolic 
upon their knees. 

When I see a man stop in the streets to comfort 



1 he Rearing of Children. 177 

some weeping child, or to get a kiss from a pair of 
juvenile lips, I know that he has passed through a 
blessed experience with children. A helpless little head 
has been laid upon his shoulder, in some hushed and 
hallowed room where the great mystery of birth has 
been enacted. Some feeble, wailing boy, pressed to his 
breast, has been borne, night after night, with weary 
arms, back and forth in the dimly lighted chamber 
while the mother caught her short half hours of rest. 
More likely still, some precious warbler, her eyes closed, 
her lips for ever stilled, her golden curls parted away 
from a marble forehead, a white rose in her hand, has 
been laid in the grave, and the sod that covers her has 
been fertilized by his tears. Oh ! there is something in 
loving dependent children, in tender care for them, and 
in losing them, even, which bestows upon the soul the 
most enriching of its experiences. They make us ten- 
der and sympathetic, and a thousand times reward us 
for all we do for them. We cannot get along without 
them ; you cannot get along without them. You can- 
not afford to do it. They are cheap at the price of 
pain and sickness, and care and toil. 

What do I mean by talk like this ? What do I mean 
by the utterance of common-place like this ? I mean 
simply to reveal some of the considerations upon which 
I condemn a great and growing vice among the young 
married people of this country — a vice which involves 
essential murder in many instances, and swells the 



iyS Tit comb's Letters. 

profits of a thousand nostrum venders. And what do I 
mean by this ? I mean that in thousands of American 
homes children have come to be regarded either as 
nuisances or luxuries. I mean that, in these homes, to 
have children is deemed a great misfortune. They are 
the bugbear that threatens people away from the mar- 
riage relation, and frightens them when in it. I mean 
that men and women, more and more in this country, 
hug to themselves their selfish delights, cherish their 
selfish ease, and consult their selfish convenience, with- 
out a consideration of their duties as men and women, 
and without a comprehension of the fact that they can 
only find their highest enjoyment by obedience to the 
laws of God, natural and revealed. I mean that there 
are multitudes who envy those unblest with children, 
and congratulate them upon their poverty. I mean that 
there are husbands who grudge every charm lost by 
their wives in the duties and sacrifices of maternity, 
and that there are wives who are made spiteful and 
angry by the interference of children with their indolent 
habits, their love of freedom and self-indulgence and 
their vain pursuits. I mean that the number is increas- 
ing of those who receive the choicest earthly blessings 
God can confer with ingratitude and wilful complain- 
ings. That is precisely what I mean ; and I do not hesi- 
tate to say that it is all a very shabby and sinful thing, 
and that it is high time that those who are guilty were 
ashamed of it. 



The Rearing of Children. 179 

A woman who, by cool and calculating choice, is no 
mother, and who congratulates herself that she has no 
" young ones " tied to her apron strings, is either very 
unfortunately organized, or she is essentially immoral. 
A man who can tip up his feet, over against his lonely 
wife, and thank his stars that he has no " squalling 
brats' 1 around to bother him, is a brute. It is time 
that some one protest, and I hereby do protest, against 
one of the great sins and shames of the age, — a sin 
which deadens the conscience, bestializes the affections, 
and ruins the health of the mistaken creatures who 
practise it, — which cuts the channel from one end of the 
land to the other of a broader Ganges than that which 
bubbles along its heathenish bank with the expiring 
breath of infancy. 

There is growing up a cowardly disposition to shirk 
trouble and responsibility in this matter. " I don't feel 
competent to bring up a family of children." Who 
does ? It is a part of your education to acquire compe- 
tence for this work. " But I don't feel like assuming 
such a responsibility." That responsibility is precisely 
what you need to keep you in the path you ought to 
walk in. "But I can't afford it." Are there two pairs 
of hands between you, and not sufficient patience, cour- 
age, and enterprise to do the duties of life ? " But I 
am afraid that I should lose my children. They are 
liable to so many accidents that it would be very 
strange if I should -be able to raise a family without 



180 Titcomb's Letters. 

losing one or two." The sweetest and truest couplet 
that the Queen's laureate ever wrote tells the story upon 
this point : — 

'' 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all." 

Ask the father and the mother, weeping over the 
coffin of their first-born and only child, whether they 
regret that the child was born. Ask them the same 
question in after years, when that little life has come to 
be a thread of gold running through all their expe- 
riences. If they give an affirmative answer, I will be 
silent. No, my married friends — you who shrink from 
accepting the choicest privilege bestowed upon you — 
you are all wrong ; and if you live, you will arrive at a 
period where you will see that there are rewards and 
punishments attached to this thing. What is to sustain 
you when, in old age — the charms of youth all past, 
desire extinguished, and the grasshopper a burden — you 
sit at your lonely board, and think of the strangers who 
are to enjoy the fruit of your most fruitless life ? Who 
are to feed the deadening affections of your heart and 
keep life bright and desirable to its close, but the little 
ones whom you rear to manhood and womanhood ? 
What is to reward you for the toils of life if you do not 
feel that you — your thoughts, your blood, your influence 
■ — are to be continued into the future ? Do you like the 
idea of having hirelings, or those who are anxious to get 



The Rearing of Children. 181 

rid of you, about your dying bed ? Is it not worth 
something to have a family of children whom you have 
reared, lingering about your grave, with tears on their 
cheeks and blessings on their lips — tears for a great 
loss, and blessings on the hallowed influence which has 
trained them in the path of duty, and directed them 
to life's noblest ends ? 

This is a subject which has not been talked about 
much publicly, but it is a very serious thing with me, 
and it ought to be with you. I love the family life. I 
esteem a Christian family — the more numerous the bet- 
ter — one of the most beautiful subjects of contemplation 
the earth affords. A father, thoroughly chastened and 
warmed in all his affections, and a mother overflowing 
with love for the dear children God has given her, 
devoted to their welfare, and guiding them by her ten- 
der counsels, sitting at their board with the sprightly 
forms and bright eyes of childhood around the table, or 
all kneeling at the family altar, form a sight more 
nearly allied to heaven than any other which the world 
presents. Do you suppose such a father would be what 
he is but for his children ? Do you believe such a 
mother would be the blessed being she is but for the 
development which she receives in her maternal office ? 
No, you know that both have been chastened, elevated, 
purified, made strong, and essentially glorified, by a 
relation as sanctifying as it is sacred. 

So I say, in closing, that you can never realize the 



1 82 Titcomb's Letters. 

very choicest and richest blessings that Heaven intends 
for you, in your relations as husband and wife, without 
children. Whom God deprives of these, he has other 
thought for, and I have nothing to say to them ; but to 
the multitude, I say, give welcome to each new comer 
whom God has lighted with a spark of his own divinity 
to grow in glory till it shall outshine the star beneath 
which it entered existence, such greeting as you would 
give an angel. Clothe him in white, bear him to the 
baptismal font, rejoice over him as a testimonial that 
God remembers you, and celebrate the day when he was 
given to your arms in such a manner that he shall know 
that it is a blessed thing to be born. Sing to him pleas- 
ant songs, and scatter roses upon his cradle. " Of such 
is the kingdom of heaven," and in such the Saviour has 
given to you those to whose pure, simple, and innocent 
likeness he would have you conform your heart. You 
are to rear your boy to manhood, and educate him to 
be a man ; and he, in turn, is to educate you to be a 
child, and protect your helpless years. It is an even 
thing, and a beautiful exhibition of that wonderful 
machinery by which all are made to bear equal burden 
in evolving the noblest life of the race. 



LETTER V. 

SEPARA TION—FAMIL Y RELA TIVES— SERVANTS. 

Whate'er the uplooking soul admires, 
Whate'er the senses' banquet be, 
Fatigues, at last, with vain desires, 
Or sickens by satiety. 

But, truly, my delight was more 
In her to whom I'm bound for aye 
Yesterday than the day before, 
And more to-day than yesterday ! 

— The Angel in the House. 

THERE arc so many subjects which call for notice 
in my letters to you that one letter, at least, must 
be a piece of patchwork. I propose that this one shall 
bear such a character. 

It is doubtless a general experience that a husband 
and wife, after living together for a time, become in a 
measure tired of one another's company. Before mar- 
riage, they were essential to each other ; after long 
months of intimacy, a sense of monotony creeps upon 
them, and a separation for a few weeks is regarded as 
desirable, or not to -be regretted. The husband would 



1 84 TitcornVs Letters. 

like a little more freedom ; the wife, perhaps, pines for 
the associations of her free and careless girlhood. 
When this feeling comes upon a married pair, the time 
for a temporary separation has arrived, and the quicker 
it is instituted the better. The object and end of it is 
to prove to both that they cannot be happy when 
separated. The first week will pass off very pleasantly ; 
the second will find them rather longing for one an- 
other's society again ; the third will burden the mails 
with tender epistles in which the romance and ardor of 
courtship will be revived ; the fourth will convince the 
wife that she has the very dearest husband in the world, 
and the husband will carry his package of letters in his 
breast pocket and sigh ; the fifth will find a day set for 
the greatly longed-for re-union, about which both will 
be thinking all the time ; and the sixth will bring the 
wife home, with all her precious beauty and band-boxes ; 
and such a meeting will take place as well might make 
an observing old bachelor commit suicide. Well, they 
have learned a lesson which they will remember as long 
as they shall live. It is proved to them that they can 
not be happy apart, and that separation will always be 
a calamity. 

Various circumstances spring up in the course of life 
which seem to dictate a temporary separation, on the 
score of economy or profit. A man will desire to go 
into a distant city, for a sojourn of months and perhaps 
years, that he may buy and sell and get gain. The wife 



Separation — Family Relatives — Servants. 185 

may not go, as it would interfere with the profits. This 
is one case ; and there may be a thousand others in 
which policy dictates a like temporary separation. My 
counsel is to regard all such inducements for separation 
as temptations of the devil. It is morally degrading 
for a husband and wife to live apart from each other. 
It is the rupture of a sacred tie — the denial of a sacred 
pledge — the breaking up of a relation into which reli- 
gion, affection, and habits of thought and life have all 
become intimately interwoven, leaving both man and 
woman loosely floating among new influences, and freed 
from the restraints to which their lives had become 
conformed. 

Separation for the time being destroys the comfort 
and withholds the rewards of married life. It is a long, 
dreary, monotonous, or anxious episode, for, which neither 
fame nor money can compensate. It is this, or worse ; 
for, certainly, nothing can compensate for the acquisition 
of that indifference on either side which proves that 
separation is not a calamity. A broken bone, too long 
left without setting, can never again make a firm junc- 
tion. Separation which shows that a pair cannot live 
apart is well ; separation which proves that they can, is 
one of the worst things that can happen. Therefore I 
say to every man, that the circumstances should be most 
extraordinary which will leave him at liberty to break up 
his home, or justify him in separating from his wife. 
If you cannot take trre wife of your bosom with you, 



1 86 Tit comb's Letters. 

you are to believe, generally, that your plans have not 
the favor of Providence. 

It is the habit of some husbands and wives to have 
intimate friends whom they cherish and correspond with, 
independently. I have known very good husbands to 
cairy on limited flirtations with girls, to be the reposi- 
tories of secrets belonging to such, and to act as their 
very agreeable next friends. Very pleasant connections 
are these, to a young husband, who has time to attend 
to them, but very dangerous in the long run. Similar 
connexions on the other side of the house have made a 
great deal of difficulty since the world began. They 
are very harmless things at first ; but there is nothing 
but danger in the intimacy of a married heart with an 
unmarried one, unless there be other relationships which 
justify it. A man or a woman who, from the most in- 
nocent motives originally, plays with such an intimacy 
as this, is toying with a very dangerous instrument. It 
leads to the establishment of secrets between husband 
and wife — itself a bad thing — and too frequently leads 
to their estrangement, more or less pronounced. You 
should never write a letter, or give occasion for the re- 
ceipt of one, which you are unwilling to show to your 
companion. Under none but extraordinary circum* 
stances should you consent to receive a secret from a 
friend which he or she may be unwilling your companion 
should know. 

If you have friends, they should be the friends of your 



Separation — Family Relatives — Servants. 187 

companion ; and this should be carried outside of the 
circle of your intimacies. You have no business with a 
friend who refuses to be your companion's friend ; and 
again you have no business with a friend whom, for a 
valid reason, your companion refuses to know. You may 
have come together from different classes of society. 
The wife or the husband may be proscribed by a class, 
while her or his companion may be a favorite of the 
same class. A husband or a wife, who is willing to ig- 
nore this proscription and distinction, demonstrates a 
lack of spirit and self-respect that is utterly contempti- 
ble. A husband or a wife acting thus dishonors his or 
her own flesh and blood. You go together ; you are to 
be received together, or not at all ; and an insult to one 
is an insult to both, always, and under all circumstances. 
And now that I have spoken of your mutual relations 
to intimates and friends, it is proper that I speak of 
your relations to your respective blood connections. 
Very fruitful causes of disturbance between husbands 
and wives are the relatives of the married pair. Not un- 
frequently the parents of the husband are brought into 
his family, and not unfrequently those of the wife. 
Doubtless there are instances in which it is impossible 
to get along without difficulty with these, but if you 
have fully apprehended my course of reasoning with 
you, and admitted its validity, there is but one course 
for you to pursue. You are one. The husband's 
parents are the wife's parents, and the wife's parents are 



1 88 Tit comb's Letters. 

the parents of the husband. You are to receive and 
treat them as your own — not with constraint and as a 
matter of duty, but willingly and affectionately. You 
are to learn to love and respect them, — to bear with 
their frailties, to comfort them in their passage to the 
tomb, to treat them in no sense as dependents, and to 
make them feel that they are not only welcome to your 
kindly offices, but that they have a right to the home 
which they have with you. You are young, and they 
are old. It is for the honor of your companion that his 
or her parents have support at his or her hands, and 
what is your companion's honor is yours. Besides, -this 
world is a world of compensations, more nicely adapted 
and more certain than you know. The time will pass 
away, and the children now on your knee will have 
grown to manhood and womanhood, and will have 
chosen their companions, as their fathers and mothers 
chose theirs before them. The home which you now 
enjoy may be broken up. Your companion will be 
taken from you, and your only resort may be the home 
of your child. The treatment which you would wish 
to receive from your son's wife, or your daughter's hus- 
band, is precisely the treatment which you now owe to 
those who hold to you the relation which you will then 
sustain to them. 

The same rules which govern you in regard to the 
parents should extend to the circle of your other rela- 
tives. Of course, your ability to maintain dependents 



Separation — Family Relatives — Servants. 189 

is a consideration ; but I regard personal and family 
honor as most inseparably involved in this thing. A 
son or a daughter who, with the power of maintaining 
without impossible self-sacrifice a father and mother, 
allows them to finish their life in an alms-house, or to 
live on the charity of those upon whom they have no 
special claims, is a brute. There are a few such mis- 
erable creatures in the world, who ought to be hooted at 
and cut by all decent people. In a measure the same 
thing is true of all family relatives. It is a matter of 
personal and family pride, as I have said. It is some- 
thing more than this The poor we have always with 
us ? and we owe a duty to them, unless we ourselves are 
equally poor ; but when a man has poor relatives who 
must be dependent, more or less, upon some one, it is 
as if God's finger had kindly pointed out to him the very 
objects upon which his benefactions should be bestowed. 
I am aware that this is rather serious doctrine for 
some minds. I am aware that relatives are often proud 
as well as poor ; that they will be dependent rather than 
labor ; that they become insufferable drones and bores, 
and haunt your homes with a most offensive and vexa- 
tious presence. There ought to be some short method 
of treating such, but I do not possess it. If you cannot 
make them useful, there are several ways of making 
them uncomfortable which may be safely left to the in- 
vention and discretion of the suffering parties. My plea 
is for a thorough identification of family feeling and 



190 Tit comb's Letters. 

family pride between husband and wife. If it entail dis- 
agreeable and unjust burdens, through the laziness or 
extravagance of dependent relatives, it is a misfortune ; 
but misfortunes are incident to all relations. Better 
bear them than leave your motives open to suspicion, 
or bring disgrace upon your family name. 

I cannot close this letter better than by saying a word 
or two upon the subject of servants. The general pro- 
position that the quality of the servant is dependent 
upon the quality of the mistress is a sound one. If a 
woman who frets at and scolds her servants ever has a 
good servant, it is in spite of the treatment she receives. 
In order to be a good mistress, it is necessary to believe 
in a few fundamental truths, which may be briefly 
stated as follows : First, servants are human beings, 
and consequently have souls ; second, servants, having 
souls, are consequently controlled by the motives which 
address themselves to a common humanity ; third, being 
human, servants have rights which no amount of service 
money can buy ; and fourth, transcendent intellectual 
endowments, a physical development of fifty-horse 
power, the broad circle of the Christian graces and vir- 
tues, a faultless disposition, a knowledge of French 
cookery, and elegant habits, cannot be obtained for nine 
Yankee shillings a week. A mistress admitting gener- 
ally the truth of these propositions possesses a basis for 
securing service that shall be reasonably satisfactory to 
her. 



Separation — Family Relatives — Servants . 191 

There is quite too much of the feeling among mis- 
tresses that they have a right to use servants as a fast 
boy uses a hired horse. They are to get the most out 
of them that they can for the money they pay. They 
take no personal interest in them, — extend to them no 
matronly care and kindness. They forget that a servant 
is a social being. They forget that she has humble 
loves and hopes, has desires for freedom and recreation 
as important to her as the higher love and hopes and 
desires of the more favored girls who occupy the parlor. 
They forget that the labors of the kitchen are tedious ; 
that the confinement of the kitchen is irksome. They 
become exacting, — strict in rules, rigid in discipline, and 
peremptory in their commands. It is not in human na- 
ture to stand this kind of thing, so the servant gets har- 
dened at last, or wilfully careless. She receives no 
praise, any way, and therefore tries to get none. A 
servant, generally speaking, whose feelings as a humble 
woman are appreciated by her mistress, who is praised 
for what she does that is well, and kindly and patiently 
instructed to correct that which is not well ; who is 
treated to sympathetic and considerate words, and in- 
dulged in that liberty which is absolutely essential to 
her bodily and mental health, will love her mistress, 
and have a desire to please. This, in all good and toler- 
ably sensible natures, will settle the matter. A giri 
exercised by this love and this desire will be a good 
servant ninety-nine times in a hundred. It is under 



192 Titcomb's Letters. 

relations like these that attachments are formed which 
are as tender as humanity and as lasting as life. 

There is a broad view in which this and all kindred 
matters are to be regarded. The mistress is quite as 
dependent upon the servant as the servant upon the 
mistress. She renders an equivalent for what you give 
her, and her service is as essential to you as your money 
is to her. You cannot get along without her, nor can 
she get along without you. Your position, to be sure, 
is superior to hers, but she owes you nothing, save faith- 
ful service and respect. The obligations are not all 
upon one side. It is just as much your duty to be a 
kind mistress and friend to her, as it is her duty to give 
faithful service and respectful treatment to you. If, 
therefore, you fail in your duty, you must not blame 
her for failing in hers. I have never yet seen a good 
servant who had not either a good mistress, or one who 
was actually inferior to herself. Human nature is very 
prevalent among women, and especially among maids 
of all-work. 



LETTER VI. 

THE INSTITUTION OF HOME. 

Home of our childhood ! How affection clings, 
And hovers round thee with her seraph wings ! 

— O. W. Holmes. 

For there are two heavens, sweet, 
Both made of love — one inconceivable 
Even by the other, so divine it is ; 
The other far on this side of the stars 
By men called Home, when some blest pair have met, 
As we are now. 

— Leigh Hunt. 

THE French have no word into which the English 
word home may be legitimately translated ; yet 
it is sufficiently evident that many of the French people 
have the thing without the name, while a large portion 
of the American people have the name without the 
thing. There are comparatively few who have an ade- 
quate idea of what home is, as an institution. It is 
recognised as a house, containing a convenient number 
of chairs and tables, with a sufficiency of chamber fur- 
niture and eatables, a' place to eat and sleep in, simply. 
9 



194 Tit comb's Letters. 

It is not unjust to say that half of the young married 
people of America have no higher conception of home 
than this. What they call their homes are simply 
boarding houses, where, for purposes of economy and 
convenience, they board themselves. 

In my idea, home rises to the dignity of an institution 
of life, and, like everything legitimately to be called an 
institution of life, is both an outgrowth of life, and a 
contributor to its development. Like all institutions, it 
has its external form and internal power and signifi- 
cance. Like the church, it has its edifice and appoint- 
ments not only, but its membership, its bonds of spirit- 
ual fellowship, and its germinal ideas, developing them- 
selves into influences that bear flowers and fruits to 
charm and feed the soul. It is into the meaning of the 
word HOME that I would introduce you first, my friends, 
and then into the home itself. Marriage is the legiti- 
mate basis of a genuine home. A husband is its priest 
and a wife its priestess ; and it is for you, young hus- 
band and young wife, to establish this institution, main- 
tain it, beautify it in its outward form, fill it with all 
good influences, develop its capacities, make it the ex- 
pression of your best ideas of intimate social life, and to 
use it as an instrument of genial power in moulding 
such outside life as may come into contact with it. Its 
outward form and its internal arrangements should, so 
far as your means will permit, be the outgrowth of your 
finest ideas and the expression of your best tastes, com- 



The Institution of Home. 195 

bined with the practical ingenuities which may be ren- 
dered necessary by a wholesome economy. 

It is not the elm before the door of home that the 
sailor pines for when tossing on the distant sea. It is 
not the house that sheltered his childhood, the well 
that gave him drink, nor the humble bed where he used 
to lie and dream. These may be the objects that come 
to his vision as he paces the lonely deck, but the heart 
within him longs for the sweet influences that came 
through all these things, or were associated with them ; 
for the heart clings to the institution which developed 
it — to that beautiful tree of which it is the fruit. 
Wherever, therefore, the heart wanders, it carries the 
thought of home with it. Wherever, by the rivers of 
Babylon, the heart feels its loss and loneliness, it hangs 
its harp upon the willows and weeps. It prefers home 
to its chief joy. It will never forget it. For there 
swelled its first throb. There were developed its first 
affections. There a mother's eyes looked into it ; there 
a mother's voice spoke to it ; there a mother's prayers 
blessed it. There the love of parents and brothers and 
sisters gave it precious entertainment. There bubbled 
up from unseen fountains life's first effervescing hopes. 
There life took form, and color, and consistence. From 
that centre went out all its young ambitions. Towards 
that focus return its concentering memories. There it 
took form, and fitted itself to loving natures and pleas- 
ant natural scenes ; and it will carry that impress 



ig6 Tit comb's Letters. 

wherever it may go, unless it become perverted by sin 
or make to itself another home, sanctified by a new and 
more precious affection. 

It is in the little communities which we call Ameri- 
can homes that the hope of America rests. It is here 
that subordination to wholesome restraint and respect 
for law are inculcated. It is here, if anywhere, that 
the affections receive their culture, that amiable dispo- 
sitions are developed, that the amenities of life are 
learned, that the mind and the body are established in 
healthful habits, that mutual respect for mutual rights is 
engendered, and here that all those faculties and quali- 
ties are nurtured which enter into the structure of wor- 
thy character. In the homes of America are born the 
children of America, and from them go out into Amer- 
ican life American men and women. They go out with 
the stamp of these homes upon them, and only as these 
homes are what they should be, will they be what they 
should be. It is with this in view that I offer a few sug- 
gestions touching the establishment of this institution 
by you. 

Just as soon as it is possible for you to do so, buy a 
house, the ground it stands on, and as much land 
around it as your business, convenience, or taste may 
require. A home can never be all that it should be to 
you and yours, unless you own it. This is doubtless 
impossible to a great multitude who will read this let- 
ter, but let not such be discouraged. A beautiful home 



The Institution of Home. 197 

life may be developed, even by a tenant at will ; though 
the security and fixedness of proprietorship are greatly 
tributary to home's permanent influences. If the home 
is owned, see that its exterior represents you faithfully. 
What you cannot afford in architecture, you can sup- 
ply in vines and flowers. The interior should receive 
the impress of allthe order, neatness, taste, and inge- 
nuity that are in you. Your home is the temple of your 
sweetest human love. It is in this temple that young 
immortals are born. It is here that characters are 
shaped into manhood and womanhood — the highest 
earthly estate. It is here that you are to work out the 
problem of your lives. It is a place of dignity. There- 
fore give it honor ; make it beautiful ; make it worthy ! 

All this, however, only relates to the location — the 
shell of your home. The ordering of its internal' life is 
of still greater importance. The greatest danger of 
home life springs from its familiarity. Kindred hearts, 
gathered at a common fireside, are far too apt to relax 
from the proprieties of social life. Careless language 
and careless attire are too apt to be indulged in when 
the eye of the world is shut off, and the ear of the 
world cannot hear. I counsel no stiffness of family eti- 
quette — no sternness of family discipline — like that 
which prevailed in the olden time. The day is past for 
that, but the day for thorough respectfulness among the 
members of a home — the day for careful propriety of 
dress and address — wilT never pass. For it is here that 



198 Titcom'tfs Letters. 

the truest and most faultless social life is to be lived ; 
it is here that such a life is to be learned. A home in 
which politeness reigns is a home from which polite 
men and women go out ; and they go out directly from 
no other. 

The ordering of a home life is so intimately connected 
with the treatment of children, that this subject should 
be treated definitely. First, every chrid born to you 
should learn among the first things it is capable of learn- 
ing, that in your home your will is supreme. The 
earlier a child learns this, the better; and he should 
learn, at the same time, from all your words and all 
your conduct, that such authority is the companion of 
the tenderest love and the most genial kindness. Play 
with your children as much as you please ; make your- 
selves their companions and sympathizers and confi- 
dants ; but keep all the time the reins of your authority 
steadily drawn, and never allow yourselves to be trifled 
with. It is only in this way that you can keep the man- 
agement of your home in your own hands, and retain 
the affectionate respect of those whom you love as you 
do yourselves. 

Again, make your home a happy place — a pleasant 
place. Much can be done towards this end by beautify- 
ing it in the manner I have already pointed out. Much 
more can be done by providing food and amusement for 
the minds of your children. These minds you will find 
to be active, restless, and greedy for new impressions. 



The Institution of Home. 199 

This restlessness is a heaven-implanted impulse. You 
have neither the power nor the right to repress it ; but it 
is your duty to give it direction, so far as possible, and 
to guide it to legitimate ends. You will find one of three 
things to be true of your children. They will be happy 
at home, or discontented at home, or they will seek for 
happiness away from home. In the ignorance of the 
nature of childhood on the part of parents has origin- 
ated the ruin of millions of men and women. Bursting 
from an unnatural and irrational restraint, they have 
rushed from the release of parental authority to perdi- 
tion ; or, allowed to seek for happiness away from home 
and away from restraint, they have contracted habits 
which curse them and their parents while they live. So 
I tell you that the only way for you to save your chil- 
dren is to make a home so pleasant to them— to pro- 
vide such grateful changes for their uneasy natures — as 
shall make their home the most delightful spot on earth, 
a spot to be loved while they live in it, and a spot to 
be recalled with grateful memories when they leave it. 
Profoundly to be commiserated is that child who looks 
back upon his home as upon a prison-house ; upon his 
youth as a season of hardship ; upon his parents as 
tyrants. If such a child ever become a good and genial 
man or woman, it will be in spite of a bad home. 

I am well aware that the homes of America will not 
become what they should be until a true idea of life 
shall become more widely implanted. The worship of 



200 Titcomb's Letters. 

the dollar does more to degrade American homes and 
the life of those homes than anything — than all things 
— else. Utility is the God of almost universal worship. 
The chief end of life is to gather gold, and that gold is 
counted lost which hangs a picture upon the wall, which 
purchases flowers for the yard, which buys a toy or a 
book for the eager hand of childhood. Is this the whole 
of human life ? Then it is a mean, meagre, and a most 
undesirable thing! A child will go forth from such a 
home as a horse will go from a stall — glad to find free 
air and a wider pasture. The influence of such a home 
upon him in after life will be just none at all, or nothing 
good. Thousands are rushing from homes like these 
every year. They crowd into cities. They crowd into 
villages. They swarm into all places where life is 
clothed with a higher significance ; and the old shell of 
home is deserted by every bird as soon as it can fly. 
Ancestral homesteads and patrimonial acres have no 
sacredness ; and when the father and mother die, the 
stranger's money and the stranger's presence obliterate 
associations that should be among the most sacred of all 
things. 

I would have you build up for yourselves and for your 
children a home which will never be lightly parted with 
— a home which shall be to all whose lives have been 
associated with it the most interesting and precious spot 
upon earth. I would have that home the abode of dig- 
nity, propriety, beauty, grace, love, genial fellowships 



The Institution of Home. 201 

and happy associations. Out from such a home I would 
have good influences flow into neighborhoods and com- 
munities. In such a home I would see noble ambitions 
taking root, and receiving all generous culture. And 
there I would see you, young husband and young wife, 
happy. Do not deprive yourself of such influences as 
will come to you through an institution like this. No 
money can pay you for such a deprivation. No circum- 
stances but those of utter poverty can justify you in de- 
nying these influences to your children. 

It is to the institution of home, as developed in its 
best form and power, under the letter and spirit of 
Christianity, that I point when the socialist approaches 
me with his sophisms, the New Lights with their loose 
theories of marriage, and the infidel with his howl over 
the basis of American civilization. It is the history of 
this home, since Christ lived, that is one of the strongest 
testimonials to his divine authority. In whatever land, 
under whatever system, by whatever men and women, 
the Christian home has been set aside for fanciful inven- 
tions, society has degenerated towards or into beastliness. 
As I have said before, the hope of America is the homes 
of America. If you to whom I write will each for him- 
self and herself make these homes the noble institu- 
tions Heaven designs they shall be, this generation 
shall not pass away before the world shall look upon a 
people the like and the equal of which it has never 
seen. A generation shall take possession of the land 
9* 



202 TitcomFs Letters. 

full of dignity, love, grace, and goodness, glowing with 
a patriotism as true as their regard for home is sacred, 
and showing that the strength of the nation is forged 
under the smoke that rises from its happy household 
fires. 



LETTER VII. 

SOCIAL HOMES, AND BLESSINGS FOR DAILY USE. 

How sweet, how passing sweet, is Solitude ! 
But grant me still a friend in my retreat 
Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet ! 

— Cowper. 

The good he scorned, 
Stalked off reluctant, like an ill used ghost, 
Not to return. 

— Robert Blair. 

I HAVE talked to you of your duties to each other, to 
your relatives, and to your servants. It remains to 
me to speak of your duties to society, as heads of fami- 
lies and rulers of homes. 

I have insisted on the thorough identification of hus- 
band and wife in feeling, pride of character and family, 
pursuit, and interest ; yet I am aware that this identifica- 
tion may be perverted into a most senseless and selfish 
devotion to one another, and an exclusiveness of com- 
munication, which are destructive of social life. I am 
acquainted with too many husbands and wives who, 



204 Tit comb's Letters. 

though all the world to each other, are nothing to the 
world. Their whole life is within their home. They 
gather comforts about them, they bear dainties to each 
other's lips ; they live and move and have their whole 
being in each other's love ; and, shutting out all the 
world, live only for themselves. I say I know too many 
such pairs as these. They are far too plenty. They 
cannot bear to be torn from their homes even for an 
afternoon. They take no interest in others. They never 
call friends and neighbors around their board, and they 
consider it a hardship to fulfil the common offices of 
social politeness — to say nothing of hospitality. It is 
not unjust to say that this is one of the most dangerous 
and most repulsive forms of married life. It is selfish- 
ness troubled, associated, instituted ; and it deserves 
serious treatment. 

Homes, like individuals, have their relations to each 
other ; and, as no man liveth to himself alone, no home 
should live to itself alone. It is through the medium 
of homes that the social life-blood of America is kept 
in circulation — through this medium almost exclusively. 
Every home should be as a city set upon a hill, that 
cannot be hid. Into it should flock friends and friend- 
ships, bringing the life of the world, the stimulus and 
the modifying power of contact with various natures, 
the fresh flowers of feeling gathered from wide fields. 
Out of it should flow benign charities, pleasant ameni- 
ties, and all those influences which are the natural 



Social Homes. 205 

offspring of a high and harmonious home life. Inter- 
communication of minds and homes is the condition of 
individual and social development, and failing of this 
no married pair can be what they should be to each 
other. Exclusive devotion to business by day, and 
exclusive devotion to selfish home enjoyments at night, 
will dry up, harden, and depreciate the richest natures 
in the course of a few years ; and, so soon as the man 
withdraws from the business of the world, the world 
1 as seen the last of him and his family for life. They 
Lave no outside associations. It is as if they did not 
I've at all. When they die, nobody misses them, for 
they have been nothing to society. As many doors 
are open as before, and social life feels no ripple upon 
its surface when the sand is thrown upon their coffins. 

There should glow in every house, throughout the 
land, the light of a pleasant welcome for friends. On 
every hearth should leap the flame that irradiates the 
forms and faces of associates. Neighborhood should 
mean something more than a collection of dark and 
selfishly-closed hearts and houses. A community should 
be something better than an aggregation of individuals 
and homes governed by the same laws, and sustaining 
equal civil burdens. Neighborhood should be the name 
of a vital relationship. A community should be a com- 
munity in fact — informed with a genial, social life, in 
which the influence of each nature, the power of each 
intellect, the wealth of every individual acquisition, the 



206 Tit comb's Letters. 

force of every well-directed will, and the inspiration of 
every high and pure character, should be felt by all. A 
neighborhood of homes like this, would be a neighbor- 
hood indeed ; and none other deserves the name. 

The fact is, that selfishness is the bane of all life. It 
cannot enter into life — individual, family, or social — 
without cursing it. Therefore, if any married pair find 
themselves inclined to confine themselves to one ano- 
ther's society, indisposed to go abroad and mingle with 
the life around them, disturbed and irritated by the col- 
lection of friends in their own dwelling, or in any way 
moved to regard their social duties as disagreeable, let 
them be alarmed at once. It is a bad symptom — an 
essentially morbid symptom. They should institute 
means at once for removing this feeling ; and they can 
only remove it by persistently going into society, persist- 
ently gathering it into their own dwelling, and persist- 
ently endeavoring to learn to love, and feel an interest 
i:\ all with whom they meet. The process of regenera- 
tion will not be a tedious one, for the rewards of social 
life are immediate. The heart enlarges quickly with 
the practice of hospitality. The sympathies run and 
take root, from point to point, each root throwing up 
leaves and bearing flowers and fruit like strawberry 
vines, if they are only allowed to do so. It is only 
sympathies and strawberries that are cultivated in sep- 
arate hills, which do otherwise. The human face is a 
thing which should be able to bring the heart into bios- 



Social Homes. 207 

som*with a moment's shining, and it will be such with 
you, if you will meet it properly. 

The penalties of family isolation will not, unhappily, 
fall entirely upon yourselves. They will be visited with 
double force upon your children. Children, reared in a 
home with few or no associations, will grow up either 
boorish or sensitively timid. It is a cruel wrong to chil- 
dren to rear them without bringing them into continued 
contact with polite social life. The ordeal through 
which children thus reared are obliged to pass, in gain- 
ing the ease and assurance which will make them at 
home elsewhere than under the paternal roof, is one of 
the severest, while those who are constantly accustomed 
to a social life from their youth, are educated in all its 
forms and graces without knowing it. 

Great multitudes of men and women, all over the 
country, are now living secluded from social contact, 
simply from their sensitive consciousness of ignorance 
of the forms of graceful intercourse. They feel that 
they cannot break through their reserve. There is, 
doubtless, much that is morbid in this feeling, and yet 
it is mainly natural. From all this mortification and 
this deprivation, every soul might have been saved by 
education in a home where social life was properly lived. 
It is cruel to deny to children the opportunity, not only 
to become accustomed from their first consciousness 
to the forms of society, but to enjoy its influence upon 
their developing life. Society is food to children. Con- 



2o8 Titcomb's Letters, 

tact with other minds is the means by which they are 
educated ; and the difference in families of children will 
show at once to the accustomed eye, the different social 
character of their parents. But I have no space to fol- 
low this subject further; and I leave it with you, with 
the earnest wish that you will consider it, and profit by 
the suggestions I have given you. 

I must talk to you in this letter (for I have but one 
more to write) in regard to your way of living, and your 
main objects of life. Are you stretching every nerve 
and straining every muscle to get gold ? Have you as- 
sociated respectability with wealth ? Are you denying 
to yourself a free and generous life now in your youth, 
in order to enjoy such a life when youth shall have 
passed away ? Are you scrimping yourselves and your 
families by mean economies which grudge every six- 
pence that escapes you, and make of your life a hard 
and homely thing? I know of many young married 
people who are living a life like this, and I pity them 
more than I blame them, because they are victims of 
false ideas, very probably inculcated by thrifty parents 
or by most thriftless philosophers. If you are an un- 
social pair, the probabilities are that you are engaged in 
precisely this business. 

Now I wish to tell you of something very much better 
than this. I am not going to advise you to adopt a 
luxurious style of living. I am not going to tell you to 
spend all you get, and to run in debt for that which you 



Social Homes. 209 

are unable to pay for. But I say that for every capable 
and healthy man, and every clever and sensible woman, 
both of whom are industrious, there is enough to be won 
in the work of life to afford a generous living and leave 
a sufficient margin for independent competence. The 
years of your life will be few, at the most ; and for you 
to throw away the enjoyment of their passing days for a 
good which may never come, to be enjoyed in a life 
that is uncertain, is to throw away for ever the blessings 
which God intends for your present food. God's bless- 
ings are not cumulative. The manna that fell in the 
wilderness came every day, and spoiled with the keep- 
ing. You may lay up wealth for age, but age, with its 
teeth gone, its sensibilities killed, and without employ- 
ment, cannot enjoy it. So ; I tell you to enjoy your 
wealth while you are earning it. I do not mean by this 
that you are to lay up nothing. I do not mean that you 
shall be imprudent or improvident. I only counsel that 
use of your money, from day to day, which will give you 
generous food, tasteful dress, and pleasant surround- 
ings, and which will tend to make life comfortable and 
beautiful. 

But some will read this who are in poverty, who do 
not hope to obtain even independence. I am not writ- 
ing to you, my friends, but to your neighbors, less 
happy than you, who have taken it into their heads to 
get rich. Perhaps they may be your employers. At 
any rate, they are very unenviable people. I write to 



210 TitcomVs Letters. 

those who have the power to make money, and who ig- 
nore the present blessings of their lot — who enjoy no 
present blessings. 1 write to those who wait for wealth 
to make their first contributions to public charities, to 
aid in the support of social and religious institutions, to 
mingle in that neighborhood life which involves a genial 
hospitality, to fill their library with books and their halls 
with pictures, to resort to the concert and exhibition 
rooms for refining amusement, to give employment to 
the poor, to make their homes the embodiment of good 
taste and substantial comfort, and to provide for health 
and pleasant recreation. 

I believe that twice as much may be enjoyed in this 
life, as is now enjoyed, if people would only take and 
use the blessings which Heaven confers on them for 
present use. We strive to accumulate beyond our 
wants, and beyond the wants of our families. In doing 
this, we deny to ourselves leisure, recreation, culture, 
and social relaxation. When wealth has been won, our 
power to enjoy it is past, and it goes into the hands of 
children whose industry and enterprise it kills and whose 
best life it spoils. It is not often that great accumula- 
tions of wealth do anybody good. They usually spoil 
the happiness of two generations — one in the getting, 
and one in the spending. 

I like the man who earns his money with the special 
design of spending it — the man who regards money only 
as a means of procuring that which shall supply the 



Social Homes. 21 1 

passing wants of his nature — of his whole nature — and 
for securing education to his children, and comfort to 
his old age. It is to such that men go for subscriptions 
to worthy objects. It is by the fireside and at the board 
of such that I am happy. It is with the free and gener- 
ous souls of such that I delight to come in contact. It 
is for such souls that life is made. Such men as these 
go on from year to year, building up their homes, mak- 
ing them abodes of beauty and plenty, and places of 
refreshment for five hundred cordial hearts. Wherever 
they go hands of warm good fellows are held out to them. 
They have the blessing of the helpless, and the envy of 
no man. Sometimes, perhaps, their wives are envied 
by the wives of other men, but it is probably out of the 
power of either party to help that. 



LETTER VIIL 

A VISION OF LIFE AND ITS MEANING. 

Here manhood struggles for the sake 

Of mother, sister, daughter, wife, 

The graces and the loves which make 

The music of the march of life ; 

And woman, in her daily round 

Of duty, walks on holy ground ! 

— Whittiek. 

And so, 'twixt joy, 
And love, and tears, and whatsoever pain 
Man fitly shares with man, these two grow old ; 
And, if indeed blest thoroughly, they die 
In the same spot, and nigh the same good hour 
And setting suns look heavenly on their grave ! 

— Leigh Hunt. 

THIS is my twenty-fourth and last letter to the 
young. As a preliminary to its composition, I 
have re-read every previous letter, and the subject of 
this has been suggested by the perusal. I have asked 
myself " what kind of men and women will these letters 
make, if there happen to be any who adopt their coun- 
sels ? " The reply comes to me in the form of a vision 
which I will unfold to you. 



A Vision of Life and its Meaning. 213 

I see a young man standing at the opening gates of 
life, and with earnest eyes scanning the landscape that 
stretches before him. Flowers are springing at his feet 
among the velvet grass ; brooks are dragging their 
chains of silver over the rocks, and passing in careless 
frolic towards the sea ; birds are fluttering like blossoms 
amid the overhanging foliage, and breathing their fra- 
grant melody upon the air ; breezes full of love are fan- 
ning his cheek, and filling him with a sense of intoxica- 
ting pleasure, and the sky is bending over him with no 
break of blue save where, in the exalted perspective, 
golden clouds sit like crowns upon golden mountains. 
His heart is bold, his limbs are strong, his blood is 
healthful, and his whole susceptible and sensuous nature 
throbs with responses to the appeals of the beauty and 
music and sweetness around and before him. 

He takes a step, and Pleasure comes from her secret 
bower, and invites him to her banquet of delights. He 
pauses for a moment, shivers with the stress of the 
temptation, puts her resolutely aside, and passes on. 
Idleness, lolling beneath a shade, points to a vacant 
seat and closes her languid eyes ; but with disgust he 
leaves her and presses forward. Ambition beckons 
from some sudden summit, but he heeds her not. Then 
Duty comes, and standing before him — a firm and ear' 
nest figure — points to a burden and bids him take it up, 
and bear it as he journeys onward. He pauses, looks 
around, ahead, above, then lifts it to his shoulder, and 



214 TitcomVs Letters. 

with muscles firmly strained presses forward with new 
vigor. Soon he becomes accustomed to the load, and 
then Duty comes again, and bids him to add to it He 
willingly takes on the new burden, and as he does so, 
finds his heart warming with cheerfulness, and his voice 
bursting into song. Revellers, steeped with wine and 
wild with hilarity, look up from their vine-covered table 
at the sound of the healthy lay, and laugh and scoff, but 
they do not approach him. Temptations that throng 
the path of the weak and faithless slink away from him 
without attack ; or, if one scatter its charms upon him, 
they slide off like dew from bronze. 

So Duty becomes to him a guiding angel. Wherever 
she leads he follows. In her steps he drops into deep 
ravines, hidden from the light of the sun ; he plunges 
into streams whose billows affright and chill him, and 
crosses them by a might which grows with every strug- 
gle ; he scales mountains that lie in his path, piled with 
huge discouragements, and sees from the summit of 
achievement, shimmering in the distance, the streams 
of great reward, winding among meadows of heavenly 
recompense. At last he comes to a point in his way 
where he pauses, and looks around him. In the pause, 
he listens to the beating of his own heart. It is the 
thrill and rhythm of manhood which that heart is 
strongly telling. He sees that he has made progress 
towards the golden mountains, with their crowns of 
golden clouds. The noise of the revellers has died upon 



A Vision of Life and its Meaning. 215 

his ear. Pleasure and Indolence are far back, and the 
temptations of youth are past, and he is, so far, safe. 
He sees now the burdens he has borne and the struggles 
he has put forth have knit his muscles, and strengthened 
his will, and developed his power. He sees how each 
constituent of the manhood that has now become his 
choicest possession was won by toil and fatigue, and 
self-denial; and patience and resistance of temptation. 
He sees that it could have been won in no other way, 
and gives honest thanks to the Providence which has 
thus transmuted the evil of life into good. 

There we leave him standing, and change the scene. 
At another gate a maiden enters. The rose sits upon 
her cheek, and the lily upon her bosom. Good angels 
are hovering all about her ; and seeking some secret re- 
cess, she kneels and dedicates herself to Heaven. As 
she comes into the path, the Tempter looks at her, and 
slinks away from her sweet and unsuspicious eyes, as if 
they were windows through which he had caught a 
glimpse of God. She is conscious from the first that 
life has meaning in it, and that the soul which informs 
her has a duty and a destiny. She knows that that soul 
is to be strengthened and enriched, — that it is to be kept 
pure, and beautified with all precious graces. Fashion 
and Frivolity flaunt their gewgaws before her eyes, but 
she puts them aside. They seek to divert her into vain 
pursuits, but she has a steady purpose and keeps a steady 
path. Flocks of seductive thoughts hover about her 



216 Tit comb's Letters. 

head, and tease her bewildered eyes ; but she repels 
them until they leave her. She gathers the flowers of 
life that bloom by the way, and places them in her hair. 
Kind words and smiles go out from her, and come back 
winged blessings to nestle on her breast. Little deeds 
of charity and mercy, dropped by the way, change into 
pearls, and seek her hand again. The mother leans upon 
her shoulder, and the sister clings to her arm. Up 
weary slopes she toils to gather fruits from the tree of 
knowledge. Down into valleys of suffering she walks, 
bearing balsams for the sick. She thinks of ease but to 
scorn it, and finds in the exercise of her faculties and 
the play of her sympathies and the development of her 
powers such healthful joy as only the worthy know. 
And thus she passes on — a creature of beauty, a bearer 
of purity, a being of modest graces and noble aptitudes, 
of fine instincts and self-denying heroism, until her 
nature brims — a golden goblet — with the wine of woman- 
hood, and she meets the companion for whom God 
designed her — whom God designed for her. 

Thus our third scene is prepared for us. Manhood 
and womanhood meet, and lives that were separate 
melodies become a harmony. How it may seem to 
others I know not, but true love between man and 
woman — the love that gives its all for life, for the sim- 
ple rewards of congenial companionship, seems to me 
the most lovely outgrowth of human nature. God and 
all good things breathe benisons upon it. It is the ad- 



A Vision of Life and its Meaning. 217 

vent of a heart into another heart, — the entrance of one 
spiritual nature into the spiritual nature of another, 
giving, I doubt not, a foretaste of the exquisite bliss 
which thrills the soul as it passes into the gate of Para- 
dise. And there stand our young man and young 
woman, her head upon his shoulder, and her ear drink- 
ing in the tender confessions of an affection to which 
her happy heart responds in gentlest numbers. " What 
God hath joined together let no man put asunder," 
falls from the sky where the evening star is glowing. 
They look up, and a pledge, heard in heaven and on 
earth, falls from their lips. Friends flock around them, 
and kisses fall upon the young wife's cheek amid the 
baptism of tears. Golden fruits are borne to their lips, 
and the twilight air is full of the pleasant jargon of 
happy human voices. Oh ! brightly gleam the golden 
mountains in the last rays of the sunken sun ; and the 
golden clouds that crown them blaze with more than. a 
solar glory ! 

And now begins the united life. Hand in hand and 
heart to heart they resume their passage up the long 
incline. In the early morning, I see them kneeling 
side by side, worshipping the God of their life, confess- 
ing their weakness and their sin, and praying for that 
spiritual nourishment which shall build them up into a 
saintly estate. At evening, before they lie down by the 
wayside for repose, I see them kneel again, and commune 
with the Good Father whose spirit dwells within them, 



21 8 Tit comb's Letters. 

If one takes up a cross, it is lightened by the other's 
hand. If one gathers a joy from the boughs of Heaven's 
munificence, the other is called to share it. With no 
heart-wanderings, no untruth, no repinings, no selfish 
monopoly of delight, they pass on for months till now I 
see that th? wife has become a mother, and bears a 
little babe upon her bosom. It is a gift of God, pre- 
cious beyond all price ; and when they kneel again they 
thank God for it, — for all the joy it brings them, for 
all the care it imposes upon them, for all the hallowed 
sympathies it calls into play, for the new springs of 
pleasure and life which it uncovers to them. Soon the 
little one is on its feet, and dances along the way, while 
another takes its place in the maternal arms. And as 
the years pass away, another and another are added to 
the pilgrim group, till they look like a band of attendant 
cherubim. 

• Meanwhile, I see that the limbs of the pair are 
growing weary. The way is hard and rough, and both 
are laden with a burden of care, accumulating as they 
go ; and now they pass into a cloud. Dimly through 
the vapor gathering before my own eyes, or enveloping 
them, I see them bowing by the way. One of the little 
ones— its fingers full of life's roses — lies stretched upon 
the sand. They kiss his marble cheek, and the little 
group bend over him and weep trickling tears, like 
statues at a fountain. I hear the mother say — "Oh, 
but for these, would I had died for thee, my son ! " 



A Vision of Life and its Meaning. 219 

From the far height I hear the tone of a bell : — is it on 
earth or in heaven ? Is it a sad bell or a glad bell ? 
I know not ; but I see that after they have hollowed a 
little grave, and deposited their treasure, and knelt upon 
it and said, " Thy will, not mine," the cloud is drunk 
up by the unseen spirits of the air, and away, on the 
pinnacle of the golden mountains, stands a little form 
with its fingers full of roses, beckoning ! There is a 
stir in the golden clouds above him, and he is received 
up out of their sight. 

Years come and go till the little ones have become 
men and women. The father's beard and the father's 
hair, so black and heavy at first, have become thin and 
white. He leans upon his staff, and totters manfully 
on. Son and daughter press around the mother and 
sustain her feeble form. An atmosphere of love en- 
velops them all. And so they rise higher and still 
higher, until, in other than earthly light, they stand 
glorified upon one of the golden summits. They stand 
upon the mount of vision, earth below and heaven above 
them. They gaze down upon the long and weary path 
they have trodden, and see that their life has been one 
long process of education and purification. That which 
was but a path of thorns in the passage is changed to a 
pavement of gold in the retrospect. Flying over the 
shining track, they see the Angel of God's Providence j 
and now they know, what once they could not wholly 
see, that the darkness which had so often passed over 



220 Tit comb's Letters. 

them as they journeyed was but the shadow of his 
blessed wings. But there comes a sound of chariots 
and horses ; the children press up to bid them adieu, 
the mountains grow radiant with a descending light ; a 
little voice, never forgotten, breaks through the purpling 
silence like an arrow of silver ; and at the sweet word 
"come," they are withdrawn into the opening glory. 

That, my friends, is my vision. Is it all fancy ? Is 
it all imagination ? Is it all poetry ? Have you an 
idea that fancy, or imagination, or poetry can do justice 
to the grandeur, beauty, and essential glory of a true 
life ? I have only felt, in painting it, how utterly poor 
I am in the endeavor to express my conception of the 
highest life of man and woman, by the use of language. 
That little creed of Mrs. Browning, uttered impulsively, 
in a flash of inspired conviction, has a world of meaning 
in it that the slow soul does not perceive. " I do believe 
in God and love," said the sweet songstress ; and so do 
I. With God and love in human life, it becomes essen- 
tially a noble and beautiful thing. To live a life thus 
informed is a peerless privilege — no matter at what 
cost of transient pain or unremitting toil. It is a thing 
above professions and callings and creeds. It is a thing 
which brings to its nourishment all good, and appropri- 
ates to its development of power all evil. It is the 
greatest and best thing under the whole heaven. Place 
cannot enhance its honor ; wealth cannot add to its 
value. It is the highest thing. Its course lies through 



A Vision of Life and its Meaning. 221 

true manhood and womanhood, through true father- 
hood and motherhood, through true friendship and 
relationships of all legitimate and natural sorts whatso- 
ever. It lies through sorrow and pain and poverty, and 
all earthly discipline. It lies through unswerving truth 
to God and man. It lies through patient, self-denying 
heroism. It lies through all heaven- prescribed and 
conscientious duty, and it leads as straight to heaven's 
brightest gate, as the track of a sunbeam to the bosom 
of a flower. 

As I look around me, and see how poor, how frivo- 
lous, how weak and drivelling a thing life is, as it is 
lived by the mass of those who are married, I confess 
that I am filled with wonder and with pity. Marriage is 
too much a convention, — its habits and duties are too 
much conventional. That it is only to be made some- 
thing better by a change in the general estimate and 
idea of life, I have said in previous letters. That a man 
and woman who live to eat, and dress, and make 
money ; whose ends of life are answered in the satisfac- 
tion of appetite and ambition, and a thirst for gold and 
equipage and position, should marry for a higher motive 
than fancy and convenience, is not to be expected. The 
structure, therefore, of a true married life, must be laid 
upon the basis of a true individual life. When men and 
women have conceived and accepted the idea that all 
good in earth and heaven is intended to minister directly 
and indirectly to individual growth, and that that which 



222 Tit comb's Letters. 

we call evil — toil, poverty, sorrow, pain, and temptation 
to sin — is intended for the development of power and 
the discipline of passion ; when they see that life tends 
upwards, and is only a preparation for another sphere 
and a better, and that all that surrounds them is perish- 
able — food and shelter and ministry by the way — then 
they can have a conception of what true marriage is. 
The relation is illuminated with its full significance only 
by this true idea of individual life. The masculine and 
feminine nature come together for mutual stimulus and 
mutual feeding. All that is good in each becomes the 
property of the other, and ail that is bad in each is 
neutralized by the other. Like the acid and the alkali, 
when brought together, their united life becomes a 
beaded draught, bland as the juice of nectarines, and fit 
to sparkle on the lips of an angel. 

And now, my friends, farewell ! Life is before you, — 
not earthly life alone, but life — a thread running inter- 
minably through the warp of eternity ; and while I 
wish you all manly and womanly joy, and all healthful 
delight, I do not wish that no pain come on you, no 
care oppress you, no toil weary you, no sorrow swim in 
your eyes, no temptations beset you ; but I wish that 
you may bear what God puts upon your shoulders, and 
bear it well. I wish that it may not be necessary to 
chasten you overmuch ; but you can hardly grow strong 
without trouble, or sympathetic without sorrow. It was 
necessary that the only true human life ever lived 



A Vision of Life and its Meaning. 223 

should be made " perfect through suffering; and it is 
strange presumption for you to think that you can be 
made perfect without it. I wish you many years upon 
the earth — as many as will minister to your growth and 
happiness — for life is a sweet as well as a great and 
wonderful thing. I wish you a family of precious 
children to fill your homes with music, and enrich your 
hearts with love. And when, in the evening of life, the 
golden clouds rest sweetly and invitingly upon the 
golden mountains, and the light of heaven streams 
down through the gathering mists of death, I wish you 
a peaceful and abundant entrance into that world of 
blessedness, where the great riddle of life, whose mean- 
ing I can only hint at, will be unfolded to you in the 
quick consciousness of a soul redeemed and purified. 



THE END. 











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